Ribbits from the Madtoad

Check Out "Steak Night Presents"!

2011-07-26T13:53:00.000-07:00

I feel a little weird using one free blog site (blogspot) to advertise another free blog site (wordpress), but Travis and I have just started "Steak Night Presents"...our bi-monthly review of interesting movies.

We watch movies so you don't have to.

Check it out here:

STEAK NIGHT!

11 Roles of Alfred Molina

2011-05-30T21:34:00.000-07:00

Alfred Molina may not be a name that springs immediately to mind when you think of great actors, but he probably should be. The man has had a long and varied career, playing wildly different roles in bizarrely different productions of movies, and he always brings it.

Always.

So, without further ado, here's some of the work of one of the best character actors working in Hollywood today.

11. Mellersh Wilkins (Enchanted April)

You may not have seen this movie (I have, but only in passing) but suffice to say it's a Howard's End/The Pianist/Remains of Day kind of movie, where British people do British things and love is always unrequited and there's lots of talking, and usually nothing happens.

The movie's own description calls it "A slow-paced gem", which is like saying, "Look, we know it's boring, but it's not that bad." Molina plays a man who's wife is dragging him along on some ladies retreat to Italy, and to be honest, he's about the only thing in the movie that I paid attention to (it was on in the background while I was reading a comic book or something, and I looked up every time I heard his voice). He was quite good, I thought, and had charisma that far outpaced anyone else on screen.

Plus he looks a bit like a confused Gomez Addams.

Imagine my surprise when I realized this was the same guy who played...

10. Rahad Jackson (Boogie Nights)

Boogie Nights is as far a cry from Enchanted April as you can get. It's about porn. It has Marky Mark, Heather Graham, Burt Reynolds, John C. Reilly, and Don Cheadle in it. It's a movie about all those people running a Porn Studio. It is the opposite of a movie about unrequited love. Love is being requited everywhere, and usually by naked people who are totally not British.

And who does Alfred play? Certainly not some nitpicked husband who's being dragged along to Italy for a Ladies retreat. Oh, no. He plays a Drug Dealer.


This is not a deleted scene from Howard's End.

A drug dealer with a silver robe, no shirt, a chain necklace and a pistol. The lead (Marky Mark) and some of his friends try to rob Rahad of 5,000 dollars at one point by selling him a kilo of baking soda, but they screw it up and end up in a shootout. If these were the only two roles Alfred Molina ever played it would still be a pretty impressive bit of "Really? That's the same guy?"

But it gets better. He's also...

9. Angel (Maverick)

Maverick, as you may know, was once a television show starring Jim Rockford (AKA, James Garner). Maverick was a conman, card player who traveled around the Old West, righting wrongs, getting in saloon fights, and gambling. He probably dated a bunch of hookers, also known as "Saloon Gals" back in those days.

At some point they made a movie (ok, it was 1994) and they hired Mel Gibson (pre-lunacy) to play Maverick and even let Rockford show up to play a sheriff chasing Maverick. But they also needed a bad guy, a foil for Maverick in this high-comedy western caper, and who did they call?

You rang?

Yep. Alfred Molina. He looks vaguely Hispanic as Angel (He is half Spanish), and was a gambler and gunfighter who caused all kinds of trouble for the title character. He was goofy, dangerous and funny, and add another notch to Molina's belt, because he has played a lot of really fun bad guys.

Not the least of which was...

8. Maxim Horvath (The Sorcerer's Apprentice)

The Sorcerer's Apprentice movie, starring Nic Cage, is one of those things that probably just shouldn't be. It should have died on some producer's desk at some point with him going, "Really? We don't have any other ideas?"

But it didn't. As Hollywood is wont to do, they filmed it, in color and everything, and all things considered, it wasn't terrible. Cage did some hamming it up, but in a good way, and they needed somebody to play the bad guy, who could carry his own scenes, seethe with rage, and still make us kind of like him, so they called upon the greatest "Oh, that guy" that Hollywood has to offer and lo and behold, Alfred Molina to the rescue.

In a perfect world, he would have been paid more than Nic Cage.

And as goofy as the movie was, Molina was a suave villain, with a few great one liners, and a couple of very cool scenes. Too bad the movie forgot about him, right near the end. (Seriously, if you watch it, after he gets knocked out of the park, something that happens to everyone in the movie at least five times, tell me where he goes. Cause the writer forgot.)

But Molina doesn't always have to be the big bad guy. Sometimes he's a misunderstood bad guy, who later becomes a friend, like when he's...

7. Sheik Amar (The Prince of Persia)

Prince of Persia was a Disney movie that wanted to capitalize on the good fortunes of the video game, and clearly on the Jake Gyllenhal is almost naked connection to young ladies. It was a fairly forgettable movie, overall, but if you look up, right there in the middle of it, playing a shady ostrich race organizer (no, really) there's Alfred Molina, as Sheik Amar!

Sheik Amar captures our heroes, then loses them, then captures them again, then sides with them, then I think he gets killed (I have to admit, I only half paid attention to the movie for the most part).

You'd trust this guy to organize your ostrich races, right?

He hammed it up like you almost never get to see him do, but he was still one of the best actors in the movie. He totally owns the crazy ostrich racing sleaze bag character. Plus, he just looks absolutely ludicrous, but still manages to be the coolest person in the whole movie. That takes effort. Speaking of effort, Alfred didn't always have it so easy with the big budget movies. There was a time when he was a struggling actor, like when he played...

6. Moody (Not Without My Daughter)

This is one of those Lifetime movies that make you wonder who comes up with these things, then you find out it's based on a true story, then you almost feel bad, then you realize that the movie is so overblown and not like the actual story that you still wonder who sits around reading newspapers looking for stories about abused women that Lifetime can put on the fast track to development, and...

Actually, this movie started out as an actual movie, but became a Lifetime movie (I think) at least, I know Lifetime showed it. Anyway, in the movie Alfred Molina is Iranian, and a doctor. He's married to Sally Field. They have a daughter. They move to Iran, and then for no apparent reason, Molina's character becomes a wife abusing religious zealot (almost like he went to America to get his medical license and a wife to bring back and abuse) and Sally has to get her daughter and escape the country.

It's terrible, let's be honest about that. But Alfred pulls off both nice foreign doctor husband, and creepy, crazy abusive zealot in the same movie and he does it with panache.

There's a story in this paper about how I should be hitting you.

Look at those creepy eyes in that picture. Yeah, I totally believe that guy would beat up Sally Field. Hey, I just realized he worked with both Burt Reynolds and Sally Field. That's weird. Not as weird as, say, Alfred Molina showing up on television in the mid-eighties...

5. Esther's Lawyer (Miami Vice)

Oh, wait, he totally did. Now, to be fair, I don't remember this episode, but I do remember Miami Vice (not Colin Farrel/Jamie Foxx Miami Vice, the other one). I remember Crockett and Tubbs. I remember Adama, er, I mean Edward James Olmos being the captain of the precinct. I remember, white suits and neon signs, and boats and guns and, hey, look at that!

The beard's doing most of the actin in this scene.

There's Alfred Molina, playing a lawyer so important to the plot he doesn't even have a name. But check out Crockett sporting some kind of purple Ocean Pacific t-shirt with a gun holster and hair long enough to rappel down a tower with.

That's some fine police work, Alfred. The only thing more awesome than this would have been if Alfred had also been on Law and Order, so he could have been on two of the most iconic television cop/lawyer shows of all time. Oh, wait...

4. Deputy D.A. Ricardo Morales a(Law and Order: Los Angeles)

I lost my beard, so I have no idea what you're saying...

Yeah, that's Alfred up there on Law and Order: Los Angeles, playing Ricardo Morales, who apparently started the show as a detective, then got promoted to Deputy District Attorney (cause, that's how it works, right?)

Holy crap, Alfred managed to land on Miami Vice and L&O! There can't be a lot of actors who can make that claim, and fewer still who also had a heavy film career. This guy's looking pretty impressive, I'll bet. But we have three more to go, and the next one freaked me out a little bit, because it's a movie I love, and I didn't realize he was in it...

3. Cezar (Ladyhawke)

Yes, that testament to cheesy fantasy movies of the eighties, Ladyhawke, starring Matthew Broderick, Rutger Hauer, and Michelle Pfiefer also contains a young, dirty, almost animalistic looking Alfred Molina.

They pulled him straight out of bed for this scene.

Alfred plays Cezar here, a wolf trapper, and this is important to the story, because if you've forgotten, in Ladyhawke, Michelle Pfeiffer and Ruther Hauer are in love, but they're cursed and during the day he's a person and she's a hawk (thus the Ladyhawke of the title) and at night she's a person and he's a wolf. So the church is going to catch him using Cezar, the master wolf catcher.

That seems like an odd job, but perhaps it's just because I don't live in a fantasy world. Alfred would get a better job later, as a scientist, which, as you know he parlayed into another villainy role when he became...

2. Dr. Otto Octavius (Spider-Man 2)

Yes, the great Doctor Octopus is also Alfred Molina. Wow, this guy gets around. And I'm also just realizing that he's pretty much a great bad guy. I wonder why it is that some actors just seem to have that genetic thing that makes them play great crazy bad guys.


Why doesn't he keep the suitcase in one of the robot hands?

I think Spider-Man 2 is my favorite of the Spidey movies, and I think 90% of that has to do with Doctor Octopus just being a great villain. He was so much more fun that Green Goblin, and infinitely better than what they did with Sandman and Venom in part 3.

But I'm going to finish this post with the first role I ever remember seeing Alfred in, and one of his first roles ever in general, and one that still surprises me when I remember that's him in that classic role...

1. Satipo (Raiders of the Lost Ark)

That's right, the guy with all the spiders on his back (hey, a spider connection for Spider-Man, neat) the guy who tried to screw over Dr. Jones in the Temple in the beginning of the movie, only to forget about the sunlight trap and get speared to death. The guy to utter the immortal line, "Throw me the idol, I throw you the whip!" That guy, was Alfred Molina.

Nothing bad can happen to me now...

Great character, great actor. Great character actor.

Top 11 Insane/Awesome Bond Villain Plots

2011-05-02T23:14:00.000-07:00

11. Casino Royale

There's no one more deadly than a man walking home from a black tie party the morning after.

Bond: Daniel Craig
The Villain: Le Chiffre (played by Mads Mikkelson)

Insane Plan:
Le Chiffre is the money guy for an evil group of, well evil people. In the books this organization was called SPECTRE (Special Executive for Counter-intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge, and Extortion), but there was some legal finagling over who owns the rights to SPECTRE, so in the new movies they're called QUANTUM (which, as far as I know, doesn't have a cool acronym). Why do they have a money guy? I guess he's like the CFO and they just run their evil organization as a business. This leads to all kinds of jokes like "Do they have a health plan?" "Do they offer dental?" "What are the hours like?" It's just kind of ridiculous both on the surface and the more you think about it.

Anyway, Le Chiffre has lost a ton of the organization's money because, well Bond did Bond things and now Le Chiffre is in trouble. So here's his plan: Hold a poker tournament with billions at stake and just win all the money. Presumably he's arrogant enough to think that he'll win, but since he's part of an evil organization if he doesn't win he'll just kill whoever does win and steal the money. Here's my problem with this, if you're part of an evil organization and you have people working for you, presumably they work for the evil organization as well. Wouldn't one of them call YOUR boss and be like, "Hey, did you guys know that Le Chiffre lost all the money? Yeah, we're having a poker tournament to get it back...no, I'm not kidding. Look, I just don't wanna get fired. Or killed."

Of course Bond shows up to the poker tourney to throw a monkey wrench into the whole thing, and Le Chiffre has to do evil things to keep the money, and of course there's backstabbing and evil plots going on all over the place, but seriously, this was the guy's idea. I'll just win the money back at poker. This is the response of the truly stupid. Who let this guy have the money? And didn't QUANTUM do a background check to make sure their CFO didn't have, Oh, I don't know, a gambling problem?

10. Live and Let Die

Nothing says spy-thriller-action movie like a good Paul McCartney song.

Bond: Roger Moore
The Villain: Dr. Kananga (played by Yaphet Kotto)

Insane Plan:
Dr. Kananga is the leader of some Caribbean country or something, where he grows tons and tons of Opium that he turns into heroin so that he can make money. Why? I'm not really sure. He has his own country already, in the Caribbean, no less, and he flies back and forth to the U.S. on a private jet, where he hangs out at the U.N. and he owns a string of soul food restaurants. Yeah, I didn't make that last part up, he really does own a string of soul food restaurants.

Not only that, Kananga is giving away 2 tons of heroin with a dual purpose: 1.) to put his competitors out of business and 2.) to create more addicts. And where is he giving away all this free heroin? Why, through his soul food restaurants, of course! But, as insane as this plan is, what I never got about Kananga was, why does he need more money? He seems to have plenty. I guess this is just one of those, the rich get greedy kind of things, but his motivation always seemed to be a little off.

Oh, and did I mention that Kananga's alter ego, the drug dealing lunatic he pretends to be, is named Mr. Big? Oh, yeah. That happened.

9. On Her Majesty's Secret Service

Manly.

Bond: George Lazenby
The Villain: Ernst Stavro Blofeld (played by Telly Savalas)

Insane Plan
Stay with me, because this one is tricky. Bond is done with his last assignment, so he heads back to work for MI6, but his bosses tell him he can't keep going after Blofeld (like he wanted to do at the end of the movie before this) so he threatens to quit, but ends up going on vacation instead so he can pursue Blofeld on his own.

Here's where the crazy starts, though. Somewhere in the Swiss Alps, Blofeld is brainwashing 10 women to distribute biological weapons throughout the world. He has ten women, that he calls his "Angels of Death", basically trapped at this Mountain Resort, where he's convincing them he's helping them therapeutically, but in reality he's playing audio tapes to them while they sleep to convince them to spread biological weapons throughout the world when he releases them.

Why? Because Blofeld wants to be recognized as a count. No, really, that's his end goal. He wants to be recognized as the current Count de Bleauchamp. Again, this man is the leader of the largest criminal organization in the world, but all he really wants to do is be a count. His plan is to hold the world ransom with his 10 brainwashed women who would destroy the world's agriculture unless he's given amnesty for all past crimes and his title of Count.

There's something seriously wrong with this guy.

8. Die Another Day

I don't know how guns work. The whole thing gets that hot?

Bond: Pierce Brosnan
The Villain: Colonel Moon (played by Toby Stephens/Will Yun Lee)

Insane Plan
Colonel Tan-Sun Moon (love that name) meets Bond early on, ends up chasing him across a minefield, gets an explosion in the face and drives a hovercraft over a waterfall (presumably to his death). There's some hand waving magic where Bond is captured by North Koreans, tortured, then released, then loses his "00" status, and has to go figure out what's going on because he believes someone betrayed him.

Turns out Colonel Moon not only didn't die, but has used gene therapy and DNA restructuring to make himself into a British guy named Gustav Graves, who has built a giant orbital satellite that can be used to harness solar energy.

Only, not really because his giant orbital satellite is actually a big freaking laser which he plans to use to destroy the minefield between North and South Korea so his troops can march in and retake South Korea
and reunite them into one big happy communist family.

I have several problems with this, but the one that makes me giggle is the thought of the North Korean army just waiting by the DMZ for the laser to clear the area so they can charge in and attack. That image just kills me for some reason.

But here are some bigger problems. Using an orbital laser to destroy the minefield/DMZ just seems like way too much overkill, doesn't it? Like getting rid of the ants in your backyard by dumping napalm on them? Couldn't he have just bought like a million remote control racecars and just driven them through the DMZ until they hit all the mines? And if you have the money to build an oribtal laser, why not just, I don't know, by some helicopters man! You're making this waaaay too complicated.

7. You Only Live Twice

He's going to be too tired to go on with the second one.

Bond: Sean Connery
The Villain: Ernst Stavro Blofeld (played by Donald Pleasance)

Insane Plan
So, Blofeld, lunatic leader of SPECTRE, has a plan. He builds a giant spaceship, sends it into space and has it hijack an American Spacecraft. Why? So he can blame it on the Russians. And, also, the Japanese. See, he made his SPECTRE spaceship totally look like a Russian spaceship so the Americans would think the Russians did it.

Then he had both spaceships crash into the sea near Japan (it's unclear whether or not that part is intentional). So now everybody suspects the Russians and/or the Japanese.

Oh, and what was the point of all this? Blofeld wants to start World War III for...some reason that's again, never explained. Look, I get the whole idea of "let's spread chaos!" or even just good old fashioned "we hate the establishment!" but seriously, there's no other motive behind this? Just "We'll start WW3"? That's it? That's your whole plan?

And again, this is a privately funded criminal organization that managed to not only put a ship in space (something not easily accomplished) but also to hijack an American space craft while they were up there! How much better off would the world be if SPECTRE would just use their money and talents for something other than Blofeld's insane whims.

6. The Spy Who Loved Me

This came up in a Google Image search for the Spy Who Loved Me. And then I cried a little.

Bond: Roger Moore
The Villain: Karl Stromberg (played by Curd Jurgens)

Stop me if you've heard this before, but Karl Stromberg wants to start World War 3...

Now, there are a couple of areas where his plan differs from Blofeld's in You Only Live Twice. First of all, instead of space ships, he just stole a couple of submarines. One from Russia, and one from America. He plans to use the American sub to blow up Moscow, and the Russian sub to blow up New York. So far, his plan seems infinitely more plausible than Blofeld's, if only because he didn't start with freaking space ships.

Subs I could see a criminal organization of this size stealing. Stealing and, you know, being able to pilot them without having to be frigging astronauts. Because, really, I mean, come on.

But Stromberg also has an end game. See, it's not enough for him to just start WW3. He has plans for what's going to happen after. Namely, he intends to repopulate the world in his own image, and just to stick with the submarine theme, he plans for that new world to be created UNDERWATER. He's even built an underwater city called Atlantis. (You were so close, dude. I was with you right up until the underwater city. And then you gave it the most cliched name...)

So, yeah. This kind of thing apparently happens a lot.

5. Tomorrow Never Dies

Jonathan Price is so pissed that Bond brought two dates to the party that he can hardly stand it.

Bond: Pierce Brosnan
The Villain: Elliot Carver (played by Jonathan Price)

We're sticking to a them here, because guess what Elliot Carver wants to do...

If you said, "Start World War 3" then congratulations! You now possess all the intelligence you would ever need to become a Bond villain. You could drool on a napkin, tie a cheeseburger to your head, and try to kick start a motorcycle with the power of rainbows, but as long as you know that your next objective is "Start World War 3" then henchmen will be flocking to your underground, volcano-covered palace ready to do battle with British Secret Service's seventh best agent.

Of course, Elliot has to throw his own monkey wrenches into the plan. He doesn't want the US and the USSR to fight. Oh, no. That's been done to death. Tried it and failed. We've seen the flaw in the plan! No, what he wants is for the United Kingdom to fight China! There you go. That ought to get her done.

Did I mention the villain in question is a media mogul who owns his own CNN type tv station? I didn't? That's too bad, because he doesn't want to do it just for kicks (like Blofeld) or to start his own society (like Stromberg). No, he wants to do it so his news team will have something big to cover on their first day on cable! No, really.

Though as a side benefit, he also expects to kill off the Chinese leaders who refused to give him full and exclusive rights to news broadcasts in China.

A little petty, now that I think about it.

4. Moonraker

Wait...can James Bond breathe in space?

Bond: Roger Moore
The Villain: Hugo Drax (played by Michael Lonsdale)

Did you think we were done with this theme? Good, because we're not. No, no, no. We have one more "I will destroy the world and remake it in my image" player left. Following Stromberg's idea of having a plan for after the destruction, and borrowing Blofeld's idea of using outerspace, Hugo Drax has decided to destroy the world and rebuild it in his own perfect image. And by destroy the world I, of course, mean by dropping poisonous plants into the Earth's atmosphere while he and his hand picked human replicators chill out on a spacestation orbiting the earth.

It's like he just mushed together Blofeld and Stromberg's plans and then added his own little extra brand of crazy with the poisonous plants.

How does Bond find these people?

3. GoldenEye

Indeed it is...

Bond: Pierce Brosnan
The Villain: Alec Trevelyan (played by Sean Bean)

GoldenEye is all about revenge. Stay with me, because this is complicated. Apparently Alec Trevelyan was a Cossack, or an Eastern European, probably from the Ukraine or Russia, they were allied with the Nazis during WW2, and his parents were killed by the British army or something, so he hates Britain. So he did what any reasonable British hating person would do: joined up with the British Secret Service. Presumably he was pretty good at his job because at some point he became a double 0 agent, and in fact the movie begins with both he and Bond infiltrating a Russian weapons facility where Trevelyan fakes his death.

He then spends 9 years building up a criminal syndicate called Janus (get it? Cause Janus is two faced...) and now intends to use a giant space satellite to destroy the Bank of England and ruin Britains economy. First of all, that's pretty much the same plot as Fight Club, and second of all, that's a really bizarre plan, isn't it? "I hate this country that killed my parents! I will ruin your economy!"

Doesn't quite have the ring of "Give me Liberty or Give me Death!" does it?

Also, he plans to steal some money first, just, cause, yeah. Money. Money's awesome.

2. View To A Kill

Is the sniper aiming for Bond, or for Grace Jones' foot?

Bond: Roger Moore
The Villain: Max Zorin (played by Christopher Walken)

Again, the complications pile up early, and again we have some loose affiliation to Nazis (always in the top 5 movie villains of all time, along with Commies, zombies, aliens, and creepy children). See, Max Zorin was some kind of genetic Nazi experiment created by a guy who escaped after WW2 and ended up hiding out in Russian (look at that! Nazis and Commies! There's no stopping them!)

Zorin runs a microchip factory in Silicon Valley, and he plans to take over the microchip market by detonating some explosives in a mine he purchased and flooding Silicon Valley with water, thus destroying all his competition. It's like the only way these guys can figure out how to be the best is by destroying their competition in the dumbest way possible. Really? A flood?

This movie is plagued with bizarre complications, though, including Zorin owning horses that always seem to win races, but can never be found with drugs in their systems (because everyone assumes he's doping them). It turns out later that he implants microchips in the horses that release drugs into them. Now, here's why this makes no sense: they test for drugs after the race, but they don't find any. But then we find out he's releasing drugs into them during the race, so how come there's no traces of the drugs? It's like the screenwriter realized that halfway through the movie you'd already be so confused by the plot that this just wouldn't occur to you.

Also, at one point Zorin has Bond and some kind of political official trapped in a building and instead of just shooting both of them he shoots the politician, leaves the gun behind, and sets the building on fire, either hoping that Bond will die in the fire, or will be caught with the gun and accused of killing the politician. At this point he realizes Bond is a spy, so why would you hope for that outcome? Wouldn't Bond just be like, "Look, I'm a British government agent, that guy set me up." And he'd be done for. I mean, seriously.

1. Goldfinger

Nothing says "High finance criminal" like a nice gold pair of pajamas.

Bond: Sean Connery
The Villain: Auric Goldfinger (played by Gert Fröbe)

My favorite Bond movie, and one of the best plans any villain ever had (in my humble opinion). Goldfinger is trying to break into Fort Knox. Now, normally this would just be any idiot's plan to get rich, "We'll break into Fort Knox and steal the gold!"

But that's not Auric's plan, oh no. See Auric already has a bunch of gold. His plan is to actually break into Fort Knox and set off an atomic bomb, irradiating the area (and all the gold) so that it would be untouchable for hundreds of years.

This would have the brilliant side effect of making the gold Auric already has exponentially increase in value. When Bond figures out what the plan is even he's impressed, and he's already James Bond.

Of course the only flaw in his plan is that he has a hot chick working for him (named Pussy Galore, of course) and she falls in love with Bond (of course) and ruins the whole thing.

Chicks, am I right?

Sometimes it's hard to get started...

2011-03-14T20:24:00.000-07:00

The Top 11 Lists that I've started writing in my head and then completely abandoned before I even start typing, is what this list really is.

11. Top 11 Days of the Week

After adding Smunday, Schmensday and Pancake Day, I realized I still only had 10 and couldn't possibly think of an 11th that wouldn't totally just be making up another day. We only have seven. Makes it hard to do a top 11 list. Though I looked it up and found out that other cultures used more than just 7 days in the past. Several cultures had 10 day weeks, and some older cultures had only 3 day weeks. Why did we pick 7? Because it's lucky? Seven's a good number but it doesn't divide well into, well, anything really. I guess if we had 350 days a year we could have 50 good weeks, but as it stands we have 52 weeks and some change left over.

That was just poorly thought out, if you ask me. And Pancake Day should so be a real day.

Smushed right between Smunday and Schmensday.

10. Top 11 Months of the Year

Ok, now I have the opposite problem from number 11, which is in order to make this list I'd have to exclude a month. Do you know how hard it is to pick one to exclude? If you had to pick 11 months to survive and kill one off which one would you pick?

December has Christmas, November has Thanksgiving, January has my birthday...I can't pick one. August? Are there any good holidays in August? Surely I know somebody who has a birthday there, they'd probably be pretty upset if I ditched it. One month's as good as another right? How would you even rank them?

See, this is how I got started in my head and then just decided not to type.

Look at them mocking me with their colorfulness...

9. Top 11 Mistakes made by Scooby Doo characters

This one was a wash as they always make the same mistakes: The Scooby gang always splits up, and the villains always overlook the fact that a bunch of kids might figure out that the monster might just be a guy in a mask.

There's another mistake the Scooby Gang make, actually: How many episodes would it take before any real person started just going, "Oh, there's a monster in town? Probably a guy in a mask. It's happened like 11,000 times already." How is that never their first thought?

They can't even drive without being terrified.

8. Top 11 Presidents of the United States

There's no way to write this list without it becoming a political debate. And I'd feel cheezy for including Washington and Lincoln because they're just the most famous. I should do a Top 11 Presidents that people don't know anything about and use Millard Filmore and Chester A. Arthur and all those guys that were President during random times of the country's existence when nothing particularly exciting was happening.

Quick, what's James Buchanan most famous for? Yeah, I don't know either.

Even I'm not sure which President I am. Oh, it says Van Buren, right there.

7. Top 11 States in the United States

After Texas and West Virginia I ran out of ideas. New York's nice. California has good weather. I guess there's some other nice ones. Illinois? Yeah, it's pretty good, I guess. It has Chicago at least. North Carolina's ok. But really, beyond those, they're all just "States that aren't Texas".

And that's just sad.

This map is 100% accurate.

6. Top 11 Fictional Bars

I came up with Cheers and the Mos Eisley Cantina, and then I ran out of ideas. There have to be more famous fictional bars, right? There's McLaren's Pub from How I Met Your Mother. There's Moes, from the Simpsons, and I guess the Drunken Clam from Family Guy. I couldn't think of anymore without just making things up. I'm bound to have missed a good one somewhere.

Oh, right. I forgot the Regal Beagle.

5. Top 11 Fake Names Generated From Spam Emails

The problem with this is that I have so many. So, so many. Spam Email Generators try to make names that look like real names, but are clearly fake. Things like "Sixta Jo", "Ghastly Q. Looseness", and "Possibly K. Enjoining". There's too many good ones for me to even try to cut that list down to 11. Possibly K. Enjoining is still killing me. I may just write a book where every character is named from a Spam Email I got. I'm almost positive someone's tried this already.

You can't fool me. That's Chuck E. Cheese after some kind of Borg Assimilation.

4. Top 11 Pizza Toppings

A difficult list for me because I run out after pretty much 5. Pepperoni, Sausage, Canadian Bacon (ham), Ground Beef and Mushrooms. I guess I could throw Garlic and Extra Cheese in there to hit 7, but everything else is non-meat related and I'm just not down with that. Mushrooms are as close as I get to putting a vegetable on a pizza. Why would you ruin a good pizza with onions and green peppers? (Sorry, Mom).

I once accidentally bit into a pizza with anchovies on it and I nearly threw up in my mouth. I can still taste that horrible, horrible pain just thinking about it. Gah! Anchovies. Bad, just bad. Don't put bait on pizza.

I don't even need to say anything. Good call, cat.

3. Top 11 Numbers between 1 and 10

Do I include decimals? Pi? Just whole numbers? I thought about doing this list and just doing 1-10 and having pi be one of the numbers, cause I thought that would be funny, but it's a long way to go for a joke. And there's not much to say about some of the numbers. I mean, 7 is lucky, 3 is the magic number, 1 is the loneliest number, but 6? I guess it's 1 third of the number of the beast. What about 4? 8? 10? Wait, I'm thinking of things. I may write this list yet.

And I already ruined the joke. Great. Way to go, Todd.

Wouldn't it be easier to color the numbers first? Just sayin.

2. Top 11 Books by Charlotte and Emily Bronte

Neither of them has ever written a good book, so this just went right out the window as soon as it flashed through my head.

Not pictured: Entertainment.

1. Top 11 Passwords I Use on the Internet

How silly would it be for me to tell you this?

Here's the trick, I just use all *'s for my passwords.

My 11 Favorite Dungeons and Dragons Modules

2011-03-03T12:09:00.000-08:00

For those that don't know, I'm a giant D&D nerd. I'm sure most of you are aware, but in case someone stumbled onto my page looking for great deals on medical supplies or pictures of girls in their underwear, well, that's not what we do here.

A Dungeons and Dragons module is basically a short story that you play through as a group with one person running the story and everyone else playing major characters. Modules were all the rage when I played in the 80's and early 90's, usually written by guys who worked for TSR (including Gygax, himself) and some of them were well crafted stories, and others were just series of monsters and bad storytelling mushed together and sold for $5.95 (yes, I'm old enough to remember when modules cost about six bucks).

Here then is my list of the favorite modules I ever ran or played in.

*SPOILER ALERT*

I will be ruining the end of some of these, so if you never played them or you don't want to know the twist ending for some reason, just check the names and the pictures and don't read my descriptions.

11. The Isle of Dread

The Isle of Dread was the module you got if you bought the box-set of Expert Dungeons and Dragons, which contained a rule book for characters levels 6-10 and this module. Ostensibly the idea was to introduce players to adventures that were outside rather than a dungeon crawl, and the island was basically covered with monsters, dinosaurs and randomly large animals (mostly snakes). The players were sent to the island based on a scrap of a note that they found showing the island's approximate location in the sea and the teaser text that told them that the island was actually covered with fabulous treasure!

The story itself wasn't very cohesive, and really you just went from one monster encounter to the next until you'd covered the entire island, but it was different and new and didn't take place underground so it had all kinds of cool things like weather and swimming and mountain climbing and what have you. Basically things kids playing D&D would never do in real life.

My favorite story about the Isle of Dread though was that in another campaign that some friends of mine played, one of the characters, a high level Fighter named Draygon, had actually chartered a boat to the island, killed everything on it, and claimed it as his own. Thus it became the Isle of Draygon in most of our campaigns after that, and I always thought that was cool.


Quick! Send the natives to slow it down!

10. Mad Monkey vs. the Dragon Claw

I didn't get to play as much Oriental Adventures as I'd have liked. OA was an add-on book for Advanced Dugeons and Dragons (1st Edition) that let you play Ninjas, Samurais, and everyone's favorite class: The Bushi. Why was it everyone's favorite? They just liked saying "Bushi". Bushi were just fighters, they didn't have any special magic abilities or anything, but it's fun to say. Bushi. Bushi. Bushi. Ok, I'll stop now.

Bushi.

The story of Mad Monkey vs. the Dragon Claw was a great read though. Basically Dragon Claw, who is one of the immortal powers of the Oriental game setting, has challenged all the other Immortal powers by telling them that his fighting style is the best. He's also made a bet that if his followers, using his fighting style, can beat everyone else, then the Immortal Powers have to let him rule over the world (or part of the world at least) however he wants to.

Dragon Claw, however, is being a jerk, and he hasn't told the other Immortals that one of the reasons his guys are the best is that he's supplied them all with magic weapons. One of the other immortals, Mad Monkey, has figured it out, and has approached the adventurers with the information and is supplying them with powers and magic items of their own to go out and destroy Dragon Claw's disciples. It's like a Saturday Afternoon Kung Fu movie as a playable game, and how could you not love that?

Aaaah! The ground is gone!

9. Vault of the Drow

A classic module that almost all old school D&D nerds are familiar with, Vault of the Drow was the player's first opportunity to fight Lolth, the Goddess-Queen of the Drow.

The Drow, if you were wondering, were this wonderfully horrible evil race of dark elves who were totally awesome in a "if they show up, you run" kind of way. They were sort of like the Agents in the first Matrix movie, and just mentioning Drow, or finding Drow weapons laying around could terrify a group of level 10 adventurers back in the day.

Of course then someone (*cough* R.A. Salvatore *cough*) wrote some terrible books about the Drow, basically told us all about them, including how their society worked, which pretty much destroyed any fear they ever instilled in anyone in a "Wait, Darth Vader's a whiny little kid?" kind of way.

But still, it was a fun module.

If there's anything more horrifying than giant spiders, it's giant FABULOUS spiders.

8. The Rod of Seven Parts

This is kind of cheating because Rod of Seven Parts is less a module than it is an entire campaign, but I liked it because it had a great back story about the war between the Dukes of the Wind and the Queen of Chaos, it had lots of adventure hooks while your group tried to find all seven parts, and it just felt epic.

You had to go to other planes of existence to find certain parts. You had to battle the ghosts of the Generals of the war that was fought over the Rod long ago, and if you managed to find all seven parts it became a very powerful artifact called the Rod of Law.

It was also the only magic item in D&D history that got it's own novel, written by Douglas Niles, who wrote several Dragonlance novels, and the next Module on the list.

Not pictured: The Rod.

7. Horror on the Hill

Horror on the Hill is just a straight forward little story, but it exemplified, for me at least, exactly what a D&D module should contain: A snippet of story, a setting, some bad guys, a cool ending. Horror on the Hill started with the players gathering at an old abandoned fort, and heading into the hill to fight whatever horrors were there (even the name works to explain everything you're doing).

There are rumors that a witch lives in the hill, but it's mostly filled with goblins and hobgoblins, and then, right at the bottom SUPRISE! A red dragon. A neat little addition that let you introduce your low level characters to fighting dragons, and pretty well capped off an interesting little adventure. Nothing too special, just a well done romp through dungeon land.

No, the Horror is on that Hill! Over there!

6. Expedition to the Barrier Peaks

This one is a classic. The players start the game being told by the Duke that a bunch of monsters keep coming out of this cave and attacking his lands, and the players are sent to deal with the problem. They head to the mountains, enter the cave, and discover that it's even more bizarre than they imagined.

The players have to deal with strange armored men, bizarre lights, hallways made of materials they've never seen before, doors that slide open and closed. It's all very intriguing in a "What the heck is going on" kind of way.

Turns out, the players are actually on a spaceship that crashed onto this fantasy planet. The DM was instructed to keep that secret until the last possible moment, describing the "shiny metal armored men" who turned out to be robots, and describing the fluorescent lighting as "magic like you've never encountered before". It was a nice twist to find out that you were on a spaceship the whole time.

Two things of note about Barrier Peaks: Stephen Colbert listed it as one of his favorite modules, and it introduced an idea that was later used profusely in video games, namely that to get to certain parts of the ship you had to find different colored keycards to open the doors. I'm sure the game described them as magic door opening scrolls, but in games like Doom and Quake and other First Person Shooters this became the standard way to progress through the game. So good for them on both counts.

Surprised that it's not Japanese? Me too.

5. Baltron's Beacon

This one is probably one of my favorites less for the module itself than it was for the enjoyable time I had playing it. In the middle of a swamp is a giant green light that fires up from this keep, and the players are sent in to find out what it is and destroy it, since it's calling all the monsters in the area to head to the keep, and nobody likes it when all the monsters get together. It just never ends well.

I remember the keep as kind of fun to explore, but mostly what I remember is that at the beginning this creepy Druid guy who lives in the swamp gives you these black seeds that you have to put into the green glow at it's base level in order to destroy it, and that's how you finish the game, you have to get to where the green glow starts and toss the black seeds in.

Now I was playing a thief in this game, so I was sneaking off by myself all the time and getting in trouble, and at one point I got captured by the BIG BAD GUY, who tied my character to a metal chair, drenched me in water and started casting shocking hands spells on me to torture me in an effort to find out why our party was here.

I did the typical action star thing at first and refused to talk, thinking I'd be awesome, but then a little actual role playing kicked in. See, I realized that my character wasn't the tough guy, he was thief! And I didn't know the rest of the party that well (I mean, in real life, sure, but my character had just met their characters) so I said, forget it, I'm not getting killed for these people I barely know. So I spilled the whole thing to the evil wizard, the black seeds, the green glow, tossing them in, the whole bit.

I'll never forget that moment, one of my all time favorite role playing game moments as the DM looked at me, and then in character for the evil wizard said, "You expect me to believe that you traveled all the way across a dangerous swamp and fought through dozens of monsters to get into my keep so you could MAKE POPCORN!"

It was a great moment, and I remember looking back and realizing that was the point in time that I realized how much fun you could have with an RPG, and that being the super awesome action star was never as much fun as playing a flawed character (like a thief willing to sell out his "friends" to save his own life). I've never looked back. The first thing I try to do when I make a character now is figure out how he's flawed. Cause that's the fun part.

What is SHE looking at?

4. The Keep on the Borderlands

Here's an example of where a module becomes popular just through sheer volume. When you bought the Basic Dungeons and Dragons box set, chances were you got this module. I heard rumors from other people that they got B1 Search for the Unknown, but I never actually saw that happen, and I bought dozens of these over the years, all of them containing Keep on the Borderlands. I always thought it was weird that the module they gave you to start with was labeled B2, and made you feel like you had already missed something.

The module itself isn't that great, as I recall. It reminds me a lot of Horror on the Hill: the characters show up at the eponymous keep and then just keep exploring the caverns nearby that are full of monsters. I remember there were some kobolds, and some lizardmen, and there was an evil priest in the keep itself who had allied himself with some of the bad guy monsters.

But what I really remember about it is that for years and years, and even to this day if you find someone that played the first Basic D&D, they all had or remember this module. That's pretty impressive if you ask me, so out of sheer nostalgia I'm ranking it 4th on my list.

Smallest.War. Ever.

3. Temple of Elemental Evil

First of all, kudos to these guys for having a cool name. Temple of Elemental Evil just sounds cool. Second, this module was huge. Much bigger and more full of stuff than any of the other modules I ever remember buying. I think it might be bigger than the Rod of Seven Parts, which was a full on campaign setting. I guess technically Temple of Elemental Evil qualifies as a campaign setting as well, since you could run, I believe from level 1 to 8 without actually leaving it.

Basically it was this giant temple built by an evil horde, and even though humans and elves and dwarves and gnomes had eradicated most of the evil horde of monsters, the Temple was still there and became sort of a base for bad guys to do bad things. So the players have to show up and beat them down again, but it turns out that underneath the evil temple, there's layer after layer of dungeon that goes down miles into the ground.

So players can just keep going back to town, then heading back to the temple to dig further and further down, defeating evil as they go. Kind of a cool way to run a campaign if you just decided you didn't want to bother with politics or overland maps or introducing any sort of NPC mystery to solve. You have dungeons, you explore them, you kill monsters you take their stuff. Rinse, repeat. Great stuff.

Never buy the creepiest house in the neighborhood.

2. Ravenloft

It may just be that I liked Dracula so much, but Ravenloft was always one of my favorites. Strahd, the evil vampire, has a castle and a nearby village full of ravishing young women to satiate his bloodlust, and the players have to show up and put a stop to it.

It's cool, because you get a lot of the Dracula feel, there's gypsies and wolves and people with names like Tatiana and Ilsa, and a creepy vampire castle full of undead things to fight, but it also has a full story, and you may actually start to feel some sympathy for Strahd when you find out all the horrible things that happened to him. It's really well done, and also contains the Sunsword, where my friend Anthony got his alter ego name from.

Plus, really good artwork and giant maps of the castle, always a bonus. Plus, again, Ravenloft is just a cool name. I like things with cool names.

Standing on his balcony, Strahd surveyed his lands and decided, "I live in a Hell hole."

1. Castle Amber (Chateau D'Amberville)

So any of the old school gamers I ever played with know this is my favorite module. I used to run it all the time, every time we started a new group, and really, I can't even explain why. I'll give it a shot though. The game starts with the players on their way somewhere, they stop to camp, they wake up in the morning in a foggy mist, and suddenly they're at Castle Amber.

If they try to leave they get killed in the mist (the module helpfully points this out to them by having a mule run off into the mist with a rope tied around it, and you hear it scream and if you pull the mule back by the rope you find a mule corpse). Basically you have to go inside the castle or die in the fog, so right there you're already off and running.

But to me, the great thing about it, is that the Castle is just full of the Amber family, who are all bat guano insane in various different ways. One of them has been buried alive by the others and she's become a ghoul out to kill anyone who comes across her. One has set up a boxing match where players can fight his flesh golem boxer. One is dead, and the only way to get out of the castle is to find his tomb and leave through there.

It 's also filled with great little puzzles that I love, like the dinner party where the players can pick and choose what dishes they want to eat that all have random magical effects on them. Eating the green beans with slivered almonds might give you a +1 strength boost until you leave the castle. Eating the cheese soup might turn you into a rabbit. It had a great little setup where these ghosts bring out every course and you asked all the players "Are you eating the braised lamb?" And only after everyone decided and the plates were taken away would you tell the players what the effect was. So it was basically just this random Russian Roulette of "Do I want to eat that?"

Another puzzle had a room with letters on the floor, and you had to cross the room in 7 steps, so you would always spell out a word (a nonsense word, usually) so whatever the first 7 letters you stepped on were would light up, and when you got across the room each of the words you could spell out would have some magical effect on you. You might get a forcefield that protected you from damage, or you might get frostbite. You just never knew.

So, for the great story, the interesting characters and the totally awesome puzzles, Castle Amber has always been my favorite Dungeons and Dragons module.

When giants are swinging trees at you and crushing your towers in their bare hands it's time to move.

11 Actors who played Batman

2011-02-05T11:29:00.000-08:00

So I picked out a new background, plus, Blogspot added this thing where it's real easy to put pictures in your posts (I mean, I guess I always could have, but the interface is much simpler now) so I went a little nuts and found a bunch of pictures and...

What was I talking about? Right. Batman.

Anyway, here's a bunch of people who have played Batman through the years. I had to include voice actors as well, since there are really only like 5 guys who ever played live action versions of Batman (not counting fan videos on youtube). So here they are:

11. Actor: Lewis Wilson
Played Batman in: 1940's Batman Serials

I'm not sure I've ever seen a 1940's Batman Serial, at least not an entire one, I'm sure I've seen clips of the show, but I gotta give this guy credit for being the first actor to portray him on film (as far as I know). I kinda like the pointy mask, and the ears that look more like devil's horns than bat ears. That cape is probably made out of some thick material that's more like carpet than cloth.

I don't think he ever fought any of Batman's signature villains, though. I'm guessing it was a lot of bad guys in suits, mobsters, probably Nazi's since it was the 40's, and no end of hilariously stereotyped Chinese and Japanese bad guys, who were probably white actors with their eyes scotch taped into a ridiculous squint, and a jet black fu-manchu.

Lewis Wilson is also the only person to ever play both Batman and Iron Man (Ok, he played a character named Jerome 'Iron Man' Collins in a movie called Sailor's Holiday, which since it was the 40's probably wasn't gay porn) and his son, Michael G. Wilson, was a producer on every James Bond Movie since Moonraker (including the new Bond movies). Lewis was married, briefly, to Dana Broccoli, who later married Albert R. "Cubby" Broccoli, who was the producer on ALL the Bond films, which is probably how his son got involved.

You had no idea James Bond and Batman were so intricately linked, did you?

Cell phones in the 40's were HUGE...

10. Actor: Val Kilmer
Played Batman in: Batman Forever (1995)

Poor Val. I like him in so many things: Real Genius, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, The Salton Sea, Willow...

He was unfortunately saddled with taking over the Dark Knight just as Joel "It should be neon and have nipples" Schumacher was taking over the Batman Franchise. Can't really blame him for that, or for a terrible script that included Robin (the movies are much better off without Robin) or the line "Holy rusted metal, Batman! I mean, really, this thing is metal and rusted and it has holes..."

Way to play off the jokes there writer guy.

Kilmer himself, however, wasn't bad. He did a great Bruce Wayne (I still think that's the key to a Batman actor, almost anybody can handle the suit and the stunt guys do all the fighting, you just gotta pull off insane rich guy). Too bad he couldn't have been in a better Batman movie.

Val Kilmer, as far as I know, has no ties to the James Bond franchise, though he was once in a great spoof of the spy genre called Top Secret. Man, Val Kilmer's been in a bunch of good movies.

And for Batman's next amazing trick...

9. Actor: Rino Romano
Played Batman in: THE Batman (Voice), (2004)

I had to capitalize all the letters in "THE" up there, because that was how this show was marketed and differentiated from other Batman shows, was it was called THE Batman. It followed a young Bruce Wayne/Batman, who I think was still in high school, and lots of people (Travis) hated it because they changed all the bad guys and he gets his butt kicked every week by guys like the Riddler and the Penguin, who are generally less physically violent criminals and more cerebral criminals.

I...didn't hate it as much as Travis did. It's got a catchy theme song, and I thought the voice actor was really good (that's the aforementioned Rino Romano, up there). But the central theme of the show was less Batman and more teen angstyness. Like someone was reading a lot of old Spiderman comics and said, "Yeah, Batman should go through more crap like this. Does he have a girlfriend who can break up with him and a bunch of friends and teachers who can be villains?"

He doesn't. But it didn't stop them from trying. They gave him a pseudo-love interest in this Gotham City cop who always seemed like she was just about to figure out he was Batman, or something. I can't remember, it's been a while since I watched it.

Not pictured: Angst.

8. Actor: Adam West
Played Batman in: Batman TV Series (1966)

Probably a lot of boos from the crowd for having this guy so low on the list. I mean, don't get me wrong, I love Adam West. In fact, I want a tv show where Adam West and William Shatner play Odd Couple type roommates. Maybe one of them is a retired cop, and the other's a con man who just got out of prison, and they're brothers, or something? I mean, who wouldn't watch that show? I'd TIVO that every week. Instead Shatner's doing some terrible TV show called *#&$ my Dad Says, which is based on a webpage and is apparently the worst thing on television, ever. It will probably never get cancelled.

Anyway, the reason I put him so low on the list is that he did some lasting damage to the Batman franchise (enough that it took Frank Miller and a bunch of other comic book writers most of the 80's to make Batman cool again and not campy). But still, I loved this show, watched it all the time when I was a kid. It just wasn't "cool" Batman.

I like Batman when he's the toughest, smartest guy in the room, when he appears from the shadows to knock bad guys out, when he's three steps ahead of the Joker, and when he disappears just as the Gotham PD shows up and leaves Commissioner Gordon scratching his head, wondering how he does that.

This Batman hangs out in Commissioner Gordon's office, has a bright red phone for the Commish to call him on, and lives with his aunt who makes sandwiches and has no idea Bruce and Dick are Batman and Robin. (Here's a question: Does she think they're a couple? Does the Aunt from the 60's show worry about that? I think she does).

Look at my belt buckle. LOOK AT IT!

7. Actor: George Clooney
Played Batman in: Batman and Robin (1997)

God, was it really that long ago? 13 years? It doesn't seem like that long. Again, I can't blame Clooney for Joel Schumacher running this franchise into the ground, kicking sand on it, spitting on it as he walked away. He had an even more ridiculous script than Kilmer had to deal with. And he had the most horribly miscast villain in Batman history (Schwarzenegger as Dr. Freeze). I won't even go into why that's such a bad idea, I'll just say that Dr. Freeze was a skinny, bald, aging doctor who used his genius in science to become a villain, and they cast the biggest, most muscle-bound actor known for quipping one liners in Hollywood. Then they let him quip one liners like "ICE to see you..."

Hang on, I have to throw up a little.

Ok, I'm back. Now that I've gotten that out of my system, I think Clooney would have made a great Batman in a GOOD batman movie. He definitely has the rich playboy thing down. He's versatile enough to go from charming Bruce to serious and insane Bruce, he's charismatic enough to carry a weak script, but the script they gave him wasn't weak, so much as it was dead, buried, and rotting.

I got paid a LOT of money...and I'm sorry.

6. Actor: Diedrich Bader
Plays Batman in: The Brave and the Bold (Voice), (2008)

The Brave and the Bold is just a great, great show. It's incredibly fun, it's got lots of cameos from DC heroes and villains, and it's like you gave some guys who really like Batman and the whole DC universe a chance to just shine. And when I figured out who Diedrich Bader was (the guy from Drew Carey) I was like, "Yeah, I recognize the voice now."

But what's weird is, it's almost pitch perfect. Bader's voice is right on par with the show. It's not a dark Batman, and it's not a campy Batman, it's stuffed itself comfortably in the Fun without being too campy category, and Bader's voice just goes perfectly along those lines.

He'd be higher on this list, probably, but like I said, as much as I enjoy fun Batman, I like dark, brooding Batman better.

Drew Carey's friends fight crime.

5. Actor: Jeremy Sisto
Plays Batman in: Justice League: The New Frontier (Voice), (2008)

Jeremy Sisto was in Clueless, a movie I unabashedly love. He was in Law & Order, a TV show that I unabashedly love. And he voiced Batman, a character that I unabashedly love. I have some unabashed love for Jeremy Sisto, somehow. Weird, right?

But the thing is, I really liked this movie. It's a sort of retelling of the formation of the Justice League, it's set in like the 50's or 60's (sort of blurs the line), it has Neil Patrick Harris as Flash, Lucy Lawless as Wonder Woman, and David Boreanaz as Green Lantern. It's a great story, a lot of fun.

To begin fighting crime, simply remove baby from straps.

4. Actor: Michael Keaton
Plays Batman in: Batman (1989), Batman Returns (1992)

There was a lot of hate for Michael Keaton when he was announced as the Batman in Tim Burton's movie, and I remember hearing a lot of "Mr. Mom!? C'mon, seriously?!" But I always thought he was a great choice. He can definitely straddle the line between being funny and being seriously dark, and I thought that would be a great choice for a Bruce Wayne, you get your charming Playboy and you get your disturbed vigilante, and really the suit makes pretty much anybody in decent shape into Batman.

I hated the car, it looked too much like a rocket ship, loved Nicholson as the Joker (not surpassed until Ledger pulled a rabbit out of his hat and knocked it out of the park in Dark Knight), hated Danny DeVito as the Penguin (he would have been a great Penguin if they had done the more comic oriented "upper class criminal in a tux" but they opted instead for "disgusting mutant who bites the heads off of fish"), was ambivalent about Michell Pfeiffer as Catwoman (She's hot, but I didn't like the bizarre zombie Catwoman direction they took that character in), loved the Prince soundtrack for the first one, hated almost everything about the second one (culminating in the ridiculous "Penguins with rockets strapped to their backs") and thought Keaton acquitted himself well throughout both movies.

It's weird, but there's this thing they do in the comics and animated series where villains don't die, they just get locked up in Arkham Asylum and then they come back later, but *SPOILER ALERT* Joker dies at the end of the first one and Penguin dies at the end of the second one, so there's really no hope that either of those characters comes back (good for Penguin, bad for Joker). Not sure why they keep doing that in the movies.

What makes you think I can't move my neck?

3. Actor: Bruce Greenwood
Plays Batman in: Under the Red Hood (2010), Young Justice (Voice), (2010)

Most people probably know him best as Commander Pike from the new Star Trek reboot who convinces Kirk to join Starfleet, but he voiced Batman in a great animated movie called "Under the Red Hood" and came back for the "Young Justice" series (which really focuses on the younger characters of Robin, Aqualad, Superboy, and Kid Flash) and he's just fantastic.

His voice is kind of commanding and gravelly and when Batman shows up to tell anyone anything you kind of pay attention because he has a very serious voice that sounds confident and like he's seen a lot of things and knows what he's talking about, which is really where Batman shines. Batman is Batman because he's experienced, he's good at what he does, he follows his own rules, and he rarely gets outsmarted and I think Bruce Greenwood has a great voice for that.

Up to this point Bruce has done a lot of secondary character stuff, and I don't know that that will change any time soon, but he's definitely got a lot of great nerdy street cred with the Star Trek and Batman stuff going on. So good for him.

That's right, baby. I'm the Bat.

2. Actor: Christian Bale
Plays Batman in: Batman Begins (2005), Dark Knight (2008)

Of all the live action Batman actors, Christian Bale has been handed, by far, the best scripts. Batman Begins and Dark Knight are great, great movies. Christopher Nolan and David Goyer really put together good stories, and I'm still burned that Dark Knight didn't get a best picture nod in 2008. It's ridiculous how good that movie was.

Arguably the worst thing about the movies is Bale, whose gravelly voice as Batman (in an effort to hide his true identity) is, admittedly, a bit over the top. But the scenes where he shines are as Bruce Wayne: Falling asleep in a board room meeting, driving his Lamborghini around like a lunatic, showing up with two women to dinner who immediately start swimming in the fountain and undressing) I definitely get the whole "Rich playboy about town" vibe from him, but at the same time you can see underneath that a separate layer of seriousness and understanding about what's really going on around him, even while he looks clueless.

His interaction with Alfred is great, he has the charming smile and the some really great dialog that he delivers with precision. Overall, while he's had the best material to work with, I also think he pulls it off well, which not everyone would have been able to do.

Batman. Serious business.

1. Actor: Kevin Conroy
Plays Batman in: Batman The Animated Series (Voice), (1992)

Yes, the gold standard for Batman actors is a voice actor, and one that doesn't actually look like he could play Batman in a movie, but that voice, man, it's absolutely perfect. Spot on, 100%, dead on the money perfect.

There's a documentary on the Animated Series DVD's where they talk about the casting calls for all the characters and how they thought they had someone for Batman but then Kevin Conroy came in and they were just blown away.

I remember hearing that voice the first time I watched the cartoon and sort of half-jokingly thinking to myself "That's weird, they actually got Batman to do his own voice..." He's really that good.

Additionally, Mask of the Phantasm, the full length animated movie they made based on the Animated Series, which got theatrical release in 1993, was, up until Batman Begins, the best Batman movie released in theaters, so he's got the movie and TV angles down. And really, like Bale, he had a lot of good material to work with. Warner Brothers went all out for the Animated Series, and it shows, great voice talent, great scripts, great art direction. It's not the greatest art in the world, but it fits the Gotham universe that they were trying to create. I always thought it was interesting that one of the things they did was instead of using white paper to draw on and coloring it in for the night shots they just started with black paper and put color on it, which made everything look darker and really brought out the sort of "Batman" feel that other Batman properties were lacking.

**NOTE: I was reminded that Kevin also did the voice for Batman in the excellent Batman: Arkham Asylum video game, one of the best games ever. So he gets bonus points for that. Thanks Mr. Tact!

Batman as voiced by the eldest Weasley child.

So, that's my list. I'm sure no one will argue any of my choices and you'll all just go peacefully on your way.

It's 2011

2011-01-26T22:27:00.000-08:00

So, I have no idea what that background is all about. Just go with it.

It's 2011 and occasionally one of my many readers (Ok, all 3 of you) have commented that I don't post on my blog anymore. That's true. It's been 7 months according to Kayla. Running a blog is tough for me because I can't imagine that many people care about what I think or do on a daily basis.

Blog entries like "I drove to work, had lunch, drove home and did laundry." Are the kinds of things that bore the heck out of me and I mean both reading and writing them, so I don't do things daily. I'm much happier discussing Batman and GI Joe at length, or posting movie trailers or online games that I find. The problem is I don't find them often enough or in a high enough density to bother posting them, so after a while I just forget the blog is here until I have a week where I see two good trailers and three good games or something.

So what I need is a theme. And since it's 2011 I figured the theme should be 11. It's a nice number, and I like it. So the theme for this year is going to be "Lists of my top 11".

Today's list is "My top 11 favorite Authors". If you have ideas for other lists I can post I'll do those too. I think the most likely outcome of this experiment is that by December I might have remembered to post 11 times. So Good Luck with that.

My Top 11 Favorite Authors

11. Jane Austen
My English teachers would be proud. Well, most of them. When I was in college I had a professor who hated Jane Austen. HATED her. She was a big fan of the Bronte sisters (Charlotte and Emily, if I recall) and I thought it was the worst drek that I'd ever had to muddle through. So, one day I was thinking, "If this lady loves these Bronte chicks, and hates Jane Austen, maybe I should check out some Jane Austen". Turns out Jane Austen was funny, lighthearted, and poked a lot of fun at the landed gentry of England. Plus, she wrote Emma, which was later the story that the screenplay for Clueless was based on, and that's one of my guilty pleasure movies. And it doesn't hurt that her last name is a homophone for the greatest city in Texas. So there's that, too.

10. Neil Gaiman
Probably one of the best fantasy authors in the world, Neil writes some great stuff. Stardust, Neverwhere, and American Gods are fantastic fantasy/sci-fi and if you haven't read them you should. Also, his work on Sandman comics (not the Spider-man villain) was tremendous. Lots of short stories, one in particular about cats dreams that I will never forget. He's awesome and you should read more of his stuff. Also, he wrote one of my top 5 books ever with author #2 on this list.

9. Robert Aspirin
I remember discovering Robert Aspirin because a friend of my parents was moving and left us a bunch of boxes of books. Most of them were Sunday comic type things like Hagar, Beetle Bailey, B.C., and Garfield. But there were a few fantasy novels thrown in as well, and one of them was Myth-Adventures, by Robert Aspirin. I was, at the time, mired in terrible fantasy novels that all felt exactly the same to me, cliche after cliche, Knights and Dragons, wicked witches and pretty princesses. It was all starting to blend together. And then Myth-Adventures was about a kid who wanted to be a thief, got caught by a wizard who forced him to learn magic against his will, summoned a demon, had his wizard mentor die, and then actually learned real magic from the demon who was a fast talking con-artist with a heart of gold. I loved it.

8. Thomas Harris
Thomas Harris has to have had one of the most impressive runs in novel history. Since the 1970's he's written 5 books which have been made into 6 movies. That's a good percentage of wins. It's like a quarterback throwing 5 passes for 6 touchdowns. I'm still not sure how he managed it. Particularly since two of those books are almost the same story. First, only writing 5 books in 40 years but being one of the best paid, most celebrated authors in the world is impressive enough. But the 5 books he wrote were: Black Sunday (about terrorists trying to blow up the superbowl), Red Dragon (about a former FBI agent visiting a serial killer in prison to track down another serial killer), Silence of the Lambs (which is pretty much Red Dragon but with an FBI trainee instead of a former agent), Hannibal (the continuing adventures of the world's most famous serial killer), and Young Hannibal (the prequel to all the madness above). But at any rate I find his books fascinating, and I've never found a serial killer novel writer that I enjoyed more.

7. Stephen King
During that dreadful time in junior high and high school when it was harder to find a good fantasy novel than it is to find a Thomas Harris book that hasn't been made into a movie, someone suggested I check out Eyes of the Dragon by Stephen King. I knew King only as a pulp horror writer, and I'd never even bothered trying to read one of his books. But Eyes of the Dragon was really good, not cliche filled, and I realized he had a very relatable writing style that kept me entertained. I immediately drove through all the books he had written, pausing to read The Shining twice. I got sucked into the Dark Tower series, complained with the rest of the world when it took too long to get sequels, and was totally devastated when he was in a car wreck and it looked like he might never finish the series. But even now I still read and enjoy his books. Duma Key was the last one I read (highly recommend it for some fun reading) and I'm starting Cell, which looks like it could be fun too.

6. Aimee Bender
I really wish I could remember how I found Aimee Bender. I think it might have been while searching for another author on this list (#5, below) and finding people on Amazon recommended her if you liked #5's books. I found some short stories she did online and was amazed at how good they were. Totally bizarre, incredibly fun, and a breeze to read. Then I found out she wrote a novel called An Invisible Sign of My Own, found it at a bookstore and loved every page of it. It's now being made into a movie with Jessica Alba. Great stories.

5. Chuck Palahniuk
Yes, the guy that wrote Fight Club. Not even my favorite of his books, but it's a great one. My favorite is still Choke, which also got the movie treatment, but isn't on Netflix. Sadness. But really, all of Chuck's books are great. Survivor, Invisible Monsters, Diary, and Lullaby were all brilliant. His plots are strange, his characters are stranger, and his writing style is sheer bliss.

4. Richard Adams
Richard Adams wrote a lot of books about animals (Shardik is about a giant bear; Plague Dogs is about two dogs who escape from an animal testing laboratory; The Ship's Cat is about...well, a cat on a ship. You get the idea.) But his masterpiece is Watership Down, still to this day my favorite book. I try to read it once a year. If you've never read it, or if you're thinking "Isn't that a kid's book about rabbits?" well, you're half right. It's about rabbits. It's not a kid's book though. It's violent, dark, funny, and probably one of the best adventure novels ever written. It literally makes me laugh and cry and keeps me hanging on the edge of my seat even though a.) It's about rabbits, b.) It's just a story, and c.) I've read it like 20 times now. It's that good.

3. Douglas Adams
I debated for a long time about how high Douglas was going to go on the list. Of all the books that I'm capable of reading and re-reading, Hitchhiker's Guide is waaaay at the top of the list. Possibly the funniest books I've ever read, and if I could figure out how to emulate his style of comedy I'd do it in a heartbeat. When I first read the Dirk Gently novels I was disappointed, but I've read them again since that long ago time and I can't imagine what was wrong with me, they're just as good as the Hitchhiker books. I'm sad that they let someone else do a Hitchhiker book after he died. Should have left it alone.

2. Terry Pratchett
This was where my debate was about where to put Douglas Adams, because he and Terry Pratchett hold a similar fascination for me. Terry is more about puns, which can be groan inducing, but the sheer volume of his work is what got me to put him at 2. He's written something like 40 discworld novels (I made that number up and I'm not doing ANY fact checking, so don't quote that). Another great author who made fantasy bearable for me. I love the witches novels, they're the best. My favorite is still Lords and Ladies, about elves coming back to the Discworld and everyone but the witches thinking that it was a good thing, but the witches having to remind everyone that, no, elves are evil little gits, was one of my favorite "turn the genre on it's ear" novels. Plus, Terry and Neil Gaman wrote a book called Good Omens which is the best end of the world novel ever. Ever.

1. Elmore Leonard
Anyone who knows me, even vaguely, could have told you who would be at the top of this list. Elmore is the author who inspires me to write. His sparse descriptions and ridiculously good dialog are what drives me to try to improve my writing at every turn. His 10 Rules for Writing is what I live by whenever I start writing a book or a story. He has books so re-readable that I've re-read all of them. Some of them several times. For me, Unknown Man #89 is my favorite, but really, you could lock me in a room with any one of his novels and I'd be happy for at least 10 read throughs.

So, there you have it. My first list.

What other lists should I make before I completely abandon this blog again?

It's Vs. Day

2010-06-16T12:25:00.001-07:00

To begin with, it's Vs. day. Syfy channel vs. 1980's/90's pop music. Tiffany vs. Debbie Gibson. Mega Python vs. Gatoroid. What, what's a Gatoroid?

And see, now I'm done with the vs. theme. I just wanted to start off with that because, really, Mega Python vs. Gatoroid...how could you go wrong. But there's other things to look at.

See, there they are down there.

It's not just that it's Lego Chess. That would be awesome enough. It's that it's Robotic. And the pieces move. And it's quite possibly the most awesome act of nerderry the world has ever seen. It's at the very least in the top 10, chess/lego related acts of nerdism that's possible.

This guy might have the most unique drum style I've ever seen. He's good, there's no doubt, it's just the way he plays pushes him over the top.

The Green Hornet trailer is all over the place, so I just picked a spot that had it and linked it over there. Seth Rogen is definitely Seth Rogen, but still it looks like fun.

Sometimes Travis sends me things that he thinks look terrible, and then, much to his chagrin, I like them. Like RED. Travis's one sentence review: "Looks like Grumpy Old Assassins." Sure, but it's got John McClane, Helen Mirren, Being John Malkovich, and the voice of the Penguin movie in it. Not to mention Dr. McCoy, Young Mr. Hooper, the original Hannibal Lector, Gans from 48 hours, Dr. Doom, and futuristic New York's most famous cabbie. Throw in Weeds, and this might be a more impressive cast than the Expendables. And I thought the trailer looked like fun.

So I guess this post ends with me vs. Travis.

Hey look at that, I brought the theme back.

NINJAS! From NORWAY!

2010-06-05T15:48:00.001-07:00

There's nothing about this movie that isn't awesome. First of all, it's about Norwegian Ninjas. Second of all, did you see the first part? About the Norwegian Ninjas? Cause that part was the part that was pretty awesome. Third, it's sort of based on a true story that has something to do with this guy. But really, just the Norwegian Ninjas part is pretty cool.

When I first found the video for Office War, I thought it was pretty cool, but man, Norwegian Ninjas. That's killing me.

I gave up on Lost after the last episode of season 1 because, well, there was all this cool stuff going on, and then they showed me that horrible smoke monster and I was like, meh. But this guy explains Lost in 3 minutes, so if you didn't watch it at all, or if you abandoned it somewhere along the way, like I did, well, you can save yourself all the time and trouble it would take you to go to the Wikipedia and try to figure out what happened.

This guy just makes all kinds of cool pancakes, presumably using some kind of food coloring and big plastic squirty bottles. I dug the Bacon and Egg Pancake.

Also, this is a weird webpage, and it took me a while to figure out that you had to click on the images and move the mouse around to get the guy to do things, but it's called Self Control Freak.

Warning: Froot is not nutritious. Though it may be nootrishus.

2010-05-01T20:49:00.000-07:00

Lawsuits. Let's see, you can argue all day about the woman who sued McDonald's over the fact that her coffee gave her 3rd degree burns and say she's an idiot because coffee is supposed to be hot (or you can argue the other side, where you find out that originally all the woman wanted was the money to cover her $20,000 medical bills, and McDonald's offered her $800. Nice.) That's all fine and good.

But here we have the last bastion of a real need for tort reform: Someone sued Kellogs claiming that they believed Froot Loops contained real fruit, and someone else sued them claiming that they believed Cap'n'Crunch with Crunchberries contained real berries.

Awesome. Welcome to the world of Absurdistan, because that's apparently where we live.

Whether you love or hate the Smurfs, Hank Azaria as Gargamel, in what is apparently going to be a live action Smurf movie, will haunt your nightmares forever.

Now this is a Cool Lego Video.

Darth Vader tells you how to get where you're going.

Let's see, we have a Stabby Robot, a Meat eating robot, some Questioning Robots, and some Robots that can track people. I've said it before, and I'll say it again, we're about a hair's breadth away from this.

Lakers win!

2010-04-21T11:46:00.000-07:00

So, the Lakers beat the Thunder, who, by the way, have the worst logo ever. It drives me crazy when professional sports teams with potentially cool names who can't be bothered to come up with a good logo. I mean seriously, this is their logo. Here are one, two, three, better logos with the same name. Those are minor league teams! Come on! You're in the NBA! You can do better than that.

Anyway, Lakers play the Jazz next, so I'm all excitedey! On to the links!

This is awesome: Iron Man punches Hugh Grant.

Super Mario Crossover So these guys spent more than a year building this game where you can play through the original Super Mario Brothers game using other Nintendo characters including

Link (from Zelda)
Samus (from Metroid)
Simon (from Castlevania)
Mega Man (from...Mega Man)
Bill Rizer (from Contra)

and of course, Mario himself.

Jonah Hex trailer.

I know there's a severe level of hatred for Mr. Cruise, but seriously, this trailer amuses me, and I hope this is as fun as it looks: Knight and Day. Maybe it helps if Tom plays a character who appears to be as crazy as he is in real life.

And here is your first picture of Thor, from the movie...Thor. That's Chris Hemsworth down there, looking all broody. If you don't know who that is, you may remember him as Captain Kirk's dad from the most recent Star Trek movie. So, good for him, he died in a spaceship crash and now he's a Norse God.

I will teach you now.

2010-04-05T09:28:00.000-07:00

Here's my fascinating bit of trivia today: I bought a pack of Marlboro Menthol Ultra Lights (what I usually buy) only it didn't say Ultra Light on it, the box says "Silver Pack". I had no idea what this meant so I looked it up. Apparently European countries won't let cigarettes call cigarettes "Light" or "Ultra Light" as it implies that they're not as bad for you as normal cigarettes. So in Europe "Light" cigarettes are called "Gold Pack" cigarettes and "Ultra Light" cigarettes are called "Silver Pack". So, there. Now you're cultured.

That probably won't help you with the Grill-Off with Ultra Hand which is some kind of Nintendo Wii barbecuing game that looks terrible, but this commercial is so off the rails bizarre that I posted it anyway.

They keep making Resident Evil movies like this one: Resident Evil: Afterlife, which is apparently in 3-D and uses the James Cameron technology, which I'm pretty sure was just an excuse to stick James Cameron's name in their trailer. Good for them.

Can't wait: Iron Man 2

I can wait for this, because Brandon would have made a much better Ang than the kid they picked (that would be my son Brandon, not, you know, any of the other Brandons we know). Anyway, The Last Airbender trailer here has lots of good footage of the bending abilities, which do look neat.

Amusing little animation about old school video games taking over the world: Pixels.

More amusing: 160 of the best Arnold quotes of all time. (Warning, there's some foul language in there).

I thought this was neat on like a bunch of different levels. Solarbeat: watch our galaxy spin and make music.

I have no idea what to make of the Nissan Land Glider, except that it leans into corners. That's right, it's a car that leans into corners. Sounds dangerous.

And to cap it all off, Travis sent me a pair of Sam Jackson movie trailers. Enjoy.

Hoppy Easter!

2010-03-16T21:13:00.000-07:00

Well, it's Easter and B-Fish wants his Easter blog. We're all about service around here, so here you go B-Fish. The rest of you can enjoy it too, I guess.

Apparently, this is a Test for the Swedish armed forces. It requires teamwork with a group of people you can't see. Kind of neat.

One of the greatest movies ever made is getting a prequel. In Norwegian. And I'm more than okay with that. It's exactly the prequel that should be made. And hopefully they'll make it right.

10 word Wikipedia. This is just absolutely, well, genius, really.

Specter Spelunker Shrinks is a great idea for a game. Run around, get big, get small, try to make it through the game. Mucho fun.

Steambirds, more awesome fun. Turn based dogfighting combat game.

There is very little that could make me happier than this video for Tecmo Bowl Throwback. God I loved Tecmo Bowl. I love that they used the original theme music and updated it. I love that the gameplay is the same. It SHOULD be!!! That was part of the brilliance. And looking at that screen for the playoff trees reminded me that EA still owns the NFL license, and this is why they should be shunned. Good for Tecmo Bowl using all the city names. Hah. Can't copyright city names, huh.

Fun movie news: Natalie Portman is going to star in Pride & Prejudice & Zombies. Awesome. Can't wait til I have a trailer for that to throw up here.

This Pac-Man movie trailer (fake) was done in 2004, apparently, but I still thought it was pretty funny.

New A-Team Trailer, in case you missed it.

New Expendables trailer. Statham, Jet Li, Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, Dolph Lungdren, Mickey Rourke...it's ridiculous.

Epic tale of Epic Epicness. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.

The Ides of March

2010-03-15T13:23:00.001-07:00

So, beware.

How exactly did using "Ides" fall out of favor. I should try to bring that back into favor. Does it even work for any month but march? And that's all Julius Caesar isn't it? The Shakespeare play?

Whatever. On to things I care about.

Captain America bothers to cast a decent villain.

The Greatest Lego Lightsaber Fight ever.

More evidence that Batman is better than Superman.

I need my mother to iron this on to a T-Shirt for me. (Thanks for all the shirts, mom! Love you!)

Predators. Nice. Check back on 3/18 for the trailer, but there's some cool sneak peek stuff up there now.

We may be getting another Heavy Metal movie after all. Technically it would be the third, but I'm going to count it as the second since the second one they made (which was for some reason subtitled: F.A.K.K.) was so terrible that I couldn't even sit through the whole thing, and it had naked chicks from start to finish. That's bad.

Tron Legacy Trailer. That's good. (That's Bruce Boxleitner! And Jeff Bridges! And sweet looking tron-cycles! YES!)

News (finally) from Christopher Nolan about Batman 3. And also, he's apparently resurrecting Superman. And also, apparently, the villain in Batman 3 will be anybody but Mr. Freeze.

What?

2010-02-23T15:42:00.000-08:00

I swear, I'm updating this page in my head and not on this page anymore. I really thought the page would just update itself as long as I thought about it hard enough. I guess that's not working.

Travis pointed out the awesome comment from Feche on Saturday (hooray! I'm huge in Argentina! Apparently.) And then Berenger of all people called me out for not updating my page. Have you updated your page Berenger? Oh, right, you don't have one.

So here's my update: Bam.

What, that's not good enough for you?

What if I show you the Cop Out trailer? No? What if I Give you the RED BAND Cop Out Trailer (Careful, it's an rated R trailer)?

What if I give you the new Nightmare on Elm Street Trailer?

(This is trailer two, and it looks good.) I'm digging that they're taking this seriously. The thing that always bothered me about Nightmare on Elm Street, and the reason I was such a Ft13 guy instead, was the corny jokes just ruined everything about Nightmare for me. Freddy's punchlines got progressively dumber and more painful to watch, and at the very least Jason kept quiet and just looked creepy. Of the big 3 Horror franchises of the 80's (Ft13, Nightmare, Halloween) Freddy was a distant 3rd (though still lightyears ahead of Chucky, ugh, so terrible). But the first Nightmare is actually good. (Has Johnny Depp in it, too). It was just that after that one (which was straight horror) it turned into campy, ridiculous, "let's let Freddy have Bond-ian punchlines after every kill" horror. (For the record, those Bond-ian punchlines were killing 007 in the mid 80's to early 90's as well. This is when it became a bad parody of itself). But now it looks like they're being all serious and scary and I'm intrigued, which is something I thought no Nightmare movie would ever do for me again.

Also, who is that guy? That's a page full of useful information right there. You may need to know who that guy is some day.

So, Mom may have solved the mystery of the Bacon Bits. Note those two bottles in the picture there. The black labeled one is bacon bits. The red labeled one is bacon pieces. The black labeled one has 3.0 oz. of bacon in it. The red labeled one has 2.8 oz. of bacon in it. They both cost the exact same amount. So what's the difference? Apparently bacon pieces are slightly bigger. So .2 oz. less fit in a bottle. So, I buy the black label. I racked my brain on this for weeks. They have the exact same nutritional info. It was driving me nuts, and I was feeling like I was getting away with something by getting my extra .2 oz. of bacon. Now I know, I'm getting tinier pieces of bacon. Meh.

But now I have a new mystery. I use Pandora. I tell it a song I like and it makes a radio station that plays other songs like that song. Many of you probably use it or have used it in the past. Also, I assume many of you know my musical tastes, so it's probably not a big shock to you that at some point I made a radio station based on a Cypress Hill song. It's cool. It plays a lot of Ice Cube, Wu-Tang, Dr. Dre, things like that. And then, twice now, inexplicably, in the middle of an hour or so of having it playing in the background it plays THIS.

Now, Pandora uses some scientific, insanely complicated, more confusing than the BCS rating system formula to compare songs and determine which ones are like the one I input when I created the station. So how exactly is Yvonne Elliman singing "If I can't have you" like Cypress Hill singing "How I could just kill a man..."?

As Geoffrey Rush says in Shakespeare in Love: "It's a mystery."

I'm such a slacker. Welcome to 2010.

2010-01-05T05:42:00.000-08:00

The year of me doing crazy things. So, check it out, I totally dropped the ball on updating this page, which several people have commented on (and by several I mean at least 3 different people noticed) so to make up for that I have posted the entirety of the story here.

That was also a chance for me to test Google's "Have a free web page" feature so it serves dual purposes. It's a fairly quick and easy way to make a web page, so I just stuck the whole book up there. I'll do my best to start updating here as well, though I have no idea with what right now.

Check back in a few days and see how I'm doing, and feel free to tell me to update the page every once in a while and I'll see what I can do for you.

Toad.

Chapter 6. A day late and a dollar short.

2009-11-16T09:08:00.000-08:00

I've been busy being all crunchy and stuff, so it took me a while to get to actually, you know, posting this. But here it is. I don't have any other cool stuff for right now, but maybe I will next week. Enjoy more pirating.

****
Voosh said, "It's all about the money." But his heart wasn't in it.
This by way of explaining to Reed why becoming a privateer was a good idea.
Voosh said, "Do you know how hard it is to even be a pirate? I mean the ocean's a big place. You've got to find other boats to, you know, pirate."
"How do you do that?" Reed asked.
"It ain't easy."
Mumphrey nodded in agreement.
The three of them sitting on the deck of the "Green Squid" sipping rum and smoking cigars. Voosh had given the rest of the crew a couple of days of leave, so there was no one else even on the boat. They watched other ships crews, legitimate ships, Mumphrey called them, as they worked through the night, loading boxes of cargo and cleaning barnacles off the front ends of their ships.
Voosh pointed one of them out. "See that one? They're loading boxes onto their ship. What do you think is in those boxes?"
Reed craned his neck to watch four guys struggling to get a giant wooden crate up a gangplank. He couldn't see anything written on the side of it. He couldn't tell how heavy it was because the four guys weren't straining, but then again, there were four of them. He shrugged, said, "I don't know."
Voosh looked at him. "Me neither." He said, "Could be anything. Food, grain, paper, gold coins, diamonds. Might be swords or shields. Might be strips of leather."
Mumphrey said, "The whole thing could be filled with dirt. Remember that?"
Voosh rolled his eyes and said, "Ye Gods, what a haul that was, eh?"
Reed said, "Dirt?"
"Boxes full of it." Voosh said.
"Dozens of them." Mumphrey agreed.
"Why?" Reed wanted to know.
"We still don't know." Voosh said. "But that's the point. A ship rolls out of port, we don't know what's on it. Unless you wanna pay someone works in the shipping office a bribe to tell you what every ship's carrying."
"Better be someone you trust." Mumphrey said.
"Damn right." Voosh agreed. "They get pinched they're not going to be so cavalier as to keep your name out of it. Not to mention it's a pain in the ass getting the information anyway."
"Why's that?"
Mumphrey said, "You got to pull into port just to find out. By the time you know the ships are halfway to where they're going. It's a waste of time."
"So you take a chance." Voosh said. "Hit a ship and hope. But sometimes you get dirt."
He took a sip of his rum and looked off wistfully at the moon over the dark ocean. He took a long drag of his cigar and said, "And that's not even the hard part."
"What's the hard part?" Reed asked.
Voosh said, "You hit a ship coming right out of port? You sit out there in the dark and wait? You got to be careful. You come up on em too fast, especially in the dark, you could ram em. Damage your ship and theirs. Not a lot of good being a pirate if you sink your ship."
"So you go slow." Mumphrey said.
"Ah, but then if they see you," Voosh continued, "Then they start firing. They know what you're up to. If you're too close to port the King's Ships start sailing out and next thing you know you're surrounded."
"They'll bust holes in your ship and sink ya." Mumphrey said.
"They don't arrest you?"
"Why should they?" Voosh asked. "You're a pirate. What do they care if you live or die?"
"That's..." Reed had to think about it. "That's not what I thought it would be like."
"Things are different on the sea." Mumphrey said.
"Very." Voosh agreed.
Reed's head was spinning. It was probably the rum. And the cigars. They were pretty strong. But there was a lot of pirating that he didn't get quite yet. The stories made it all seem so easy. All you needed was a sailing background, the ability to fight, and an inability to care about stealing other people's stuff. Seemed there was a lot more to it than that.
Reed said, "How'd you become a pirate?"
Voosh chuckled. "Stupid really. I was pinched for stealing a bag of salt from a local merchant. He was going to cut my hands off, but instead he decided to put me to work swabbing the ship he traded on."
"Swabbing?"
"You know, mopping the deck. Keeping seagull poop off the railings. Basically keeping the ship clean."
"It's a terrible job." Mumphrey said.
"The worst." Voosh agreed. "But I learned all I could. Sailing, knots, navigating by the stars. Everyone on the ship was basically a slave who owed the Merchant, an old guy named Taggart, some amount of money or something. Or was a thief he didn't turn in, whatnot like that."
"So that's how you learned about sailing?"
"Where I learned everything. See, we're out at sea once and one guy had just had it. Taggart had been riding him, so the guy just goes berserk. Kills Taggart, throws his body overboard, and now we're pretty much all free. We didn't know what to do. We couldn't go back to Taggart's home port, cause people would be looking for him. We didn't want to go back where we'd been. They'd ask questions. So we stayed out on the sea. Fished for food, drank all the water and liquor that was on board, and then we decided to become pirates."
"So you just became a pirate?"
"Something like that." Voosh said, "We had to learn on the job. We found out all kinds of things. Like how hard it was to actually overtake a merchant ship. How much harder it was to just get the people on that ship to hand you their stuff. How it was even harder once people got back to port and started saying, 'Hey, there's pirates out there.'"
"Huge pain in the ass." Mumphrey agreed, finishing off his rum.
"So what happened?" Reed asked. "How did you end up here?"
Voosh shook his head. "That was twenty years or so ago. I guess things just worked out."
"What happened to the ship? The merchant's men?"
Voosh looked at Mumphrey and Mumphrey just smiled.
Voosh said, "This is the merchant's ship."
"It is?"
"The very one." Mumphrey said.
"So, what happened to the guy that killed the merchant?"
Mumphrey nodded at Voosh and said, "We made him captain."

***

It was almost dawn. Reed was leaning against the main mast, snoring, and Mumphrey was starting to doze off.
Voosh said, "Here they come."
They could see the torches coming down the road, heading to the docks. Three of them. The only people awake this time of night. They made their way to the pier and started coming up the gangplank of the "Green Squid".
Voosh said while they waited, "What do you think of the kid?" Nodding at Reed.
Mumphrey said, "He looks familiar to me, somehow, but I can't place it."
Voosh just said, "Hm."
"He'll be all right, I guess."
The three men were at the top of the gangplank now, looking around. Voosh decided he'd better take care of things. He said, "Keep an eye on my back."
Mumphrey said, "Aye."
The guy in front was tall, with a long black beard that he kept braided neat. He stood nearly a foot taller than Voosh, making Voosh have to crane his neck to look in the man's eye. He had two body guards with him, all of them carrying torches. The bodyguards were big, Voosh thought. But not tall.
Guy liked to keep people around he could look down on.
The guy looked around the ship, glanced at Mumphrey and the sleeping Reed and then back down at Voosh.
He said, "You're the captain?"
It was the tone Voosh didn't like. Such disdain. Like the guy was mocking him.
"What do you want?" Voosh said, deciding there was no reason to be nice about this.
"Here." The guy stuck out a parchment folded and sealed with wax. Voosh looked at it. No seal in the wax. Nobody wanted their sign on a paper for some Privateers. Especially if things went bad.
Voosh said, "There's money too, right?"
The tall man looked down at him. He said, "Oh yes. Pirates."
One of the bodyguards handed the tall man a bag that jingled with coins. The man passed it to Voosh.
Voosh said, "It's all here."
"I'm not going to stand around while you count it."
Voosh eyed him warily.
The tall man sighed. "If it's short then consider it free money and you don't work for us. That's how confident I am in it's contents."
Voosh said, "Fine."
They stood there a moment longer.
Voosh said, "Is there a reason you're still on my ship?"
The tall man smiled at him. Voosh wondered for a moment if they guy was going to do anything, but at the last minute he appeared to decide to let it go. He turned and walked back down the gangplank, followed by the two bodyguards.
Mumphrey walked up to him and said, "What was that all about?"
"That was Guard Captain Varin." Voosh said.
Mumphrey looked off into the darkness at the torches. "Really?"
"It really was." Voosh said. "I guess they're serious."

Chapter 5. And we're back to the Orcs.

2009-11-08T20:29:00.000-08:00

I had a lot of fun writing this chapter for some reason. I hope you like it.

On the non-novel front there's Flood Fill to play. And Kurt Russel's Han Solo audition to watch.

Have fun with those. On with the book:

****

Loro and his orcs spent the better part of the day hiding in the field, watching the little farm house from the safety of six to eight foot tall stalks of corn. Moving between the rows to keep out of the farmer's sight, and avoid the god-awful scarecrows the man kept in his field.
"They stink." Pakk said at one point. Pakk was a burly orc, with a scimitar hanging from his belt. "Like there's rotting meat inside."
Loro agreed. They did stink. So they avoided the scarecrows and watched the farmer as he tilled away at his task. They considered briefly killing the man out in the field. But there were possible problems with that.
"We don't know if he only has one child." Akar said, remembering Loro's rules of engagement.
That was true. They hadn't seen any children yet. But these were farmers. All farmers had kids, right? So there must have been at least one.
"There's no one helping him in the fields." Boga pointed out. This was true. If he had kids wouldn't they be helping?
Mull pointed out that perhaps the children were too small. "Maybe his kids are young."
The man didn't look young. He looked older. Perhaps his children were all gone away. Grown men.
Loro didn't know for sure what kind of man this was, just that he was a farmer, his farm was far enough away from anyone or anyplace else for them to get ambushed suddenly by a neighbor, and that farmers usually had kids.
So they waited and they watched.
Eventually the man finished up his work, in the early afternoon, and headed to the house.
Probably for lunch, Loro thought. Or an afternoon snack.
An afternoon snack sounded good. Loro hadn't eaten since the night before. None of them had. They didn't have any food they didn't have to cook, and building a fire in the man's cornfield to make lunch just seemed like it was asking for trouble..
When the man entered the farmhouse Loro said, "All right, let's go."
He felt a surge of energy then, and something in the pit of his stomach. They were doing something. This was the beginning. It was exciting. Would there be anyone else in the house at all? Maybe the man lived alone. Maybe he was a great warrior who had retired and only now tended a farm since he could no longer adventure with the younger warriors or fight alongside the king in epic battles.
Maybe they'd have an epic battle right there inside the man's house, swords flashing and fists flying. Bloodshed. Things he'd grown up appreciating. How long had it been since he'd been in a good fight? A while.
The orcs were swift and silent. They moved through the cornfields like a pack of wolves through a forest, coming upon a lone deer, ready to feed on it's corpse, ripping it apart savagely, tearing it limb from limb, rending the sweet meat from the bone.
Loro sent a couple of the orcs around to the back, to make sure there was no one behind the big farmhouse for one thing, but for another thing, to pen the man in. Come at him from two sides. A classic pinch maneuver, Loro thought. It had been a long time since he'd gotten to use battlefield tactics as well. He hoped he wasn't rusty.
Before he knew it he was in the small yard that led to the front door. A big window looked out on the yard, but the glare from the sun kept him from seeing inside. He wondered if the man was there, watching them approach, ready to take action.
There was no time to lose, don't let the man get prepared, he thought.
His hand on the front door knob, he turned it.
The door swung open, creaking ever so slightly, and he stepped inside, noting first the smell of something cooking, and then the darkness of the interior of the little farmhouse. His eyes took a moment to adjust to the light, but he stepped inside quickly to be out of the doorway, not only so the sun at his back wouldn't silhouette him and make him an easy target, but also so his band of warriors could follow him inside. He took one step, then a second, and then there was someone in the doorway.
A woman, old, sweet looking, with gray hair done up in a bun on her head. She looked at him and at Mull and Boga coming in behind him and said, "Oh." Putting her hand to her mouth and jumping back, startled.
Loro thought he should use his gruff voice, and careful not to show any sign of emotion he said, "Where are the children?"
The woman glanced off to the back of the house. She looked at Loro and said, "No! Not the children!"
The man's voice came from the back room then, saying, "What is it?"
He appeared behind her and said, "Good Gods!" His eyes going wide as he stared at the savage orc standing in his living room, holding a short sword to his wife's throat. Loro said, "The children! Bring them out!"
The man moved towards his wife, but Loro was faster, pulling her towards him and spinning her around so he could put his blade at her throat, using her as a shield in case the man were armed.
He waved his sword in a vaguely threatening fashion at the woman's throat and said again, "The children!"
"There!" Akar shouted. Loro looked towards the back of the house and saw a small boy, maybe five or six years old, with black hair coming out of a room. He looked tired, like he'd just woken up, but now his eyes had widened as well, seeing his mother or his grandmother being held hostage by a six foot tall, green skinned monster with a sword. The boy started to say something but his voice wouldn't come out of his mouth for some reason.
Loro thought the situation was perfect. He'd slice the woman's throat, stab the man in the chest, skewering him, and they would move on. Leaving the poor kid to become an orphan. A powerful orphan who would one day come for revenge on the orcs. Perhaps as a wizard or a knight, ready to do battle with the forces of evil. Yes, he'd be perfect.
He almost did it then, killed the woman and the man, but he hesitated, seeing the look in the man's eye. He didn't look angry or bitter, just scared, and Loro didn't want to do it for a moment. He felt a twist of conscience and didn't know for sure what it was. It wasn't something he'd ever felt before.
Before he could steel his nerves and do the deed though he heard a voice in the back of the house say, "There's two of them!"
He looked back at the kid. Jeru had come up behind him and picked him up by the back of his shirt. He was holding him like a mother cat holds a kitten, Loro thought, looking at the boy sitting there helpless in Jeru's massive green hand. And in Jeru's other hand, another boy. The same size and shape as the first, with the same dark hair, wearing the same blue clothes.
Twins.
The two boys watched their parents about to be mercilessly slaughtered and he realized then he couldn't do it. One of the kids started to cry. Loro sighed and released his grip on the woman. She fell forward into her husband's waiting arms, and he closed his eyes and hugged her tight to his chest.
She said, "Please don't hurt the children." Her voice tearing up.
The man said, "What in the Nine Hells is going on?"
Akar said, "I think you mean eight."
Loro looked over at Akar who was holding a curved dagger in one hand and looking at the farmer. He glanced at Loro and shrugged. "It's eight." He said.
Loro said, "Eight?"
Boga, standing behind Loro, said, "It's nine."
"Eight." Akar reiterated.
Loro looked at the man and woman. They were staring aghast, though in different directions. The man was staring at Akar, holding that wicked curved blade down at his side as he argued with one of the other orcs. The woman was still staring at Jeru holding the twins.
Loro looked over to see Jeru hold one of them up to his nose and sniff. He pushed the kid away, a sour look on his face. He looked over to see Loro looking at him and said, "This one's peed."
Loro said, "Oh."
"He's scared." Loro looked over to see the old woman. She was trying to move in that direction, but fear was holding her back.
Loro said, "It's ok." He nodded at Jeru, and Jeru put the kid down and let the old woman have him. He held the other kid almost casually at his side as the woman and the child hugged each other.
The woman looked at Loro, figuring him to be in charge, and said, "Is it all right if I get him some clean pants?"
"Please." Loro said. "Go ahead."
Jeru moved out of the doorway to let them pass, and bumped the other kid's head on the wall.
The kid said, "Ow!"
Jeru picked the kid up and turned him so he could look directly in his face. He said, "Sorry."
The kid was rubbing his head now. Loro turned his attention back to the other orcs, the ones that had followed him into the front door.
Akar was saying, "Look, you don't count the first part. The part right outside. That's purgatory? Or Limbo? I forget. Maybe it's both. But Hell itself, that is, the eight hells, they don't start until after that."
Boga was counting on his fingers. He was saying, "There's the frozen part, there's the buried up to your neck part, there's the lake of fire..."
Pakk said, "I thought it was a pit of fire."
"It is a pit." Akar agreed.
Boga said, "It's a lake."
"Pit." Akar said.
"I say pit." Pakk said.
Loro turned back around to the old man, the farmer, still standing there, awed and amazed by this scene taking place in his living room. He said to Loro, "You won't hurt the children then?"
Loro said, "No. We won't."
He looked back at the rest of the orcs and they were putting their blades away and still babbling about the eight or nine hells.
Boga was saying, "Look, you dig a pit, you put water in it, it's a lake. You put fire in it, it's a lake of fire."
Akar said, "It's not a lake of fire, it's a pit of water. You call it a lake if it has water in it and a pit if it's full of fire."
"That's ridiculous." Boga argued. "That's like saying if I put water in a cup it's a cup, but if I fill it with mead it's a jug."
"It's a tankard." Pakk said. "Filled with mead."
Boga rolled his eyes. "Ok, look, that's not important. We're up to seven, right? Frozen, buried, firey pit or lake, lost in the dark, tortured by demons, covered with ants, what else was there?"
Pakk said, "I think it's covered in honey."
Akar said, "And that's all with the buried part anyway, you get buried up to your neck, they cover your head with honey, then they bring out bees...or ants...or something."
Boga pointed out, "Bees aren't attracted to honey. They make it."
Akar said, "Oh, that's a good point."
Pakk said, "Bears are, though!"
"Oh, that would be good, huh? Put honey on your head, and then the bears come-"
Loro shouted, "Enough!"
They all stopped talking and turned to look at him.
"We're going." He said, simply. He turned to look at the farmer and nodded. The farmer, completely confused about what to do nodded back.
Jeru handed the other twin to the old woman who had come back with a freshly cleaned first twin. Everyone else had made their way outside.
He looked outside at Akar, waiting for him to come outside. The others milling around in the yard, wondering which direction they'd head off in next.
He said, "Hang on." To Akar.
Loro looked at the old woman standing there, still staring at him, and said, "Do you have any food? We're starved."

***

Later on, when she told the story, Agnes would tell the other women at the farmer's market that the orcs had actually been very pleasant. They'd sat quietly while she fixed stew and they ate very calmly, without making a mess. When they were done they thanked her and actually put their dishes in the sink.
She'd say, "I don't know what it was that happened, but it was like a miracle." And she would say, "And they didn't smell near as bad as those scarecrows Ollie put out in the fields."

***

Loro led the orcs out of the farmhouse and into the darkness of night. He'd told the man not to mention them being there and the man had readily agreed, happy to have his family in once piece. Things could have gone a lot worse. It was only by the grace of the Gods that Loro hadn't killed him and his wife.
When they were safely away from the farmhouse Mull said, "That was pretty good stew."
"It was." Boga agreed. "I could have eaten another bowl."
Akar said to Loro, "We couldn't have killed them anyway. Two kids, right?"
Loro said, "Yeah, I guess. But I just don't know. I don't know that I could have done it anyway. It just felt so wrong."
Akar nodded. "It did, didn't it."
"It's one thing to fight on a battlefield." Loro said. "To know that your opponent wants to kill you as badly as you want to kill him. But those people. They were just minding their own business. I mean, they were farmers."
Akar nodded again. "And they were actually pretty nice."
"That was good stew." Loro agreed.
Something was happening. He didn't know what it was, but he could feel it coursing through him. He didn't want to murder people. This might not have been the best plan. He looked up at the stars and wondered what the Orc Gods thought of him right now. Probably thought that he was losing it. That he was showing too much compassion for his enemies. But were those people really enemies? He couldn't think of them that way.
They'd surely never set foot in the Northern Wastes, or tried to attack an orc village. They'd never raided or pillaged an orc community. They were just farmers.
He didn't know if he had it in him to keep up this plan.
Looking around the rest of the group he didn't know if they did either. They all seemed to be very relieved that they hadn't killed those poor people. Their kids were nice too. They sat quietly at the table next to armed men who had threatened their family and just ate dinner. It was all so very confusing.
Loro said, "We'll try again tomorrow." But his heart wasn't in it.

Needs a title. Chapter 4 today!

2009-11-02T07:33:00.000-08:00

There's nothing I love more than random movie trailers, except maybe when somebody goes out of their way to mash up a movie trailer with another movie trailer. Like this Pulp Fiction/Alice in Wonderland crossover.

And speaking of Pulp Fiction, here's somebody with way too much time on their hands.

Apparently last week's chapter was too graphic, or something, since no one bothered to comment on it. But that's ok. I have no shame, and nothing better to do than post Chapter 4.

Enjoy.

***

Shonin Lord Gahn-Jihan, Emperor King of Isterak, was half a world away, being whisked through his own palace by his personal security detail, a group of a dozen highly trained swordsmen, wearing pale white masks to hide their identities, and speaking with his favored adviser on all matters relating to foreign policy, Kotero. Kotero was listening faithfully, without prejudice, to what his master was saying.
The Emperor King was saying, "That man is a fool if he thinks there will be no retribution for this injustice!"
Kotero said, "Yes, master."
"He thinks he can do whatever he wants! Because he is called king in his own land? He is a mindless idiot who thinks only with the organ between his legs."
"Yes, master."
The Emperor King held the gaze of his adviser and said in a hiss, "He looked at her breasts!"
"Yes, master." Kotero repeated dutifully. This had happened. Kotero had witnessed it himself.
It wasn't the looking that had been such an affront, at least not in Kotero's mind. This might have passed unnoticed. It was certainly on pain of death that anyone in Isterak would have done such a thing. When any of the Emperor King's several wives was present each man averted his eyes, as they had always done in the presence of any royal female. Indeed, Kotero thought, it would be nigh on impossible to find a man in the entire kingdom of Isterak that could pick one of the Emperor King's wives out of a line-up of women. There were frequent rumors that some of the women didn't exist, or that the number of women was actually misreported. Perhaps there weren't dozens. There may have only been one wife as far as the men in the kingdom were concerned.
But Kotero knew that there were at least six that he had been in the presence of personally. They were used for different things. One was brought to state dinners held in the Emperor King's palace. One was specifically designed to teach the Emperor King's children their duties as a court officer. One was brought along on foreign affairs. This one, her name was Yahn-Theil, was the one that they were speaking of currently.
Yahn-Theil was a beautiful woman. Kotero knew that he could be killed if he even hinted that he were aware of such a thing, but living in the palace he had opportunity to see the woman on several occasions, what with him being the adviser on foreign policy. And whenever they went abroad she was there with them. It was unavoidable. But he also understood that part of his job was to make sure that the Emperor King never caught him looking at her, and that he never mentioned that he'd seen her. The truth and the visibility of the truth were often two seperate things.
This was what made Kotero such an invaluable adviser on foreign affairs, his knowledge of the visibility of truth. Stated another way, perception is reality.
But what had set Gahn-Jihan off was not just that King Otho had dared to stare at his wife (or more specifically, her spectacular breasts) but that he had openly commented on them.
What King Otho had said, as far as Kotero could remember, was "Good Lord, those breasts are spectacular!"
He'd actually leered at her.
And Gahn-Jihan had been furious.
But he'd contained himself for the rest of the visit, never commenting to King Otho that this was unacceptable behavior. Only now, on the other side of the world, did he let his wrath show. That was the sign of a good leader, Kotero thought. Never let the enemy see just how pissed you are.
But now, there was nothing to hide. His master's anger was brought to the forefront, and it was time to deal with it.
The only question was, how?
Full scale war?
That seemed ridiculous. Especially now. The rest of the trip had been a complete success. He'd gotten exactly what he'd wanted from Grandview's officials. Trade would start booming soon, with Isterak sending silks, spices, and alcohol across the sea in exchange for grains, iron ore, and sturdy wood that could only be found in Grandview's lands. It would be an economic boon for both sides. Things had worked out perfectly.
But now? With the Emperor King turning red and ready to explode?
No, there must be some other way to deal with this situation.
Something that wouldn't destroy the trade agreements that were already in place. A war would be disastrous.
Any overt action would be disastrous.
This called for subtlety.
And subtlety was how he planned to handle his master.
The fine art of manipulation was another credit to Kotero's ability to advise his Emperor King.
"We should bring in Lanto." Kotero suggested. "And see what the law says we should do."
Kotero already knew what the law said. He just needed to remind Gahn-Jihan before he made a sudden decree that couldn't be overturned. Once the Emperor King made his statement out loud there would be no going back on it. It would be put into effect as law. If he said the man had to be eviscerated by a blind donkey than Kotero was going to spend a lot of time trying to find a blind donkey, trying to find a donkey he could blind without killing it, and then figuring out how he was going to get either King Otho to the donkey or the donkey to King Otho. Not to mention trying to figure out how to get a donkey to eviscerate someone.
Better to jump in early and keep Gahn-Jihan from saying something dangerous.
Gahn-Jihan said, "Lanto? Do we really need to check the laws?"
"It's a matter of foreign diplomacy, my master. The laws are advised. We should at least see what they say. Perhaps they will find a way to appease you."
Gahn-Jihan thought on this. He had some sincere ideas about how to deal with a lecherous foreigner like King Otho. Someone who would so brazenly look upon his wife's form and comment on it for all to hear. His imagination ran wild with the things he could do. Places to put the man's head. Places to spray the man's entrails. Something about donkeys. But Kotero was right. It was best to check the laws. Perhaps they could find something suitable to do to the man.
"Very well." Gahn-Jihan said. "Have Lanto brought to the court."
And with that the Emperor King whisked away, his brightly colored cape fluttering in the wind, and his pack of trained guards surrounding him on all sides, anticipating their masters every move, like a well armed school of fish.
Kotero was left alone in the hallway, wondering how he managed to stay alive every day.

***

Lanto was, as usual, reading the great stone tablets that stood on the walls of the Room of Law. This was his only duty. A young girl, naked from the waist up, was feeding him grapes as he read, and occasionally rubbing his shoulders as he oohed and ahhed and spit grape seeds on the floor.
Kotero motioned for the girl to leave and she did so, smiling at him as she passed, noting that he saw nothing but her bare breasts. Kotero had to regain his focus before speaking, and this gave Lanto an opportunity to speak.
"Yes?" Was all he said, his gruff voice echoing around the stone chambered room.
Kotero spent a moment studying the giant granite walls. Twenty feet tall, Covering every wall of the room, words carved from floor to ceiling, these were the laws of Isterak. The law itself forbade writing them down on anything else, decreeing that the stone tablets must be kept where they had been written, in the room of Law. This had presented endless problems early on, until someone clever, someone probably not unlike Kotero himself, had devised a way to make the laws mobile.
"Make someone memorize them." This early Kotero-like advisor had decreed. And someone had. Throughout history there had been nearly a hundred men who held the job that was now Lanto's. To live in the Room of Law, and to memorize every piece of information carved there.
There were perks to this job, to be sure. Like bare breasted ladies feeding you grapes while you "worked". And all the food and drink you could stomach. And freedom to do whatever you wanted. As long as when the time came you knew the laws you were supposed to memorize. And knew them well.
More than one reader of the law had been beheaded by an Emperor King for stumbling through a difficult phrase, or saying "I'm not sure..." or muttering "I think it says..." You had to know it and you had to know it well. Lanto knew it well. He'd been born and bred for this job.
Kotero knew the law pretty well, too. Well enough to advise and guide and point the Emperor King in different directions. Well enough to know when he needed Lanto to verify the specifics of a law. Lanto for his part knew that it required someone like himself and a willing partner like Kotero to keep a lunatic Emperor King from bringing the entire system crashing down on itself.
Lanto said, "What's he done now?"
"Nothing. Yet."
Lanto had learned early on that it was wise to make sure there was no one in the room save himself and the occasional half naked girl. He could talk freely to Kotero without worrying that some guard with half a sense of civic duty would go wandering off and tell Gahn-Jihan what had been discussed behind his back. Kotero thanked the Gods every time he needed Lanto's help that the man had been blessed with such foresight.
"I need a passage." Kotero said. He always started this way. He needed Lanto to point him to something that either was the legitimate rule, or something that sounded enough like it that between the two of them they could push Gahn-Jihan into what they needed done, or at least keep him from declaring war on the moon.
"What is it?" Lanto said. "Something happen on your boat trip?"
"Our master was offended by the offhanded comment made by a foreign king."
"Wants to declare war, does he?"
"I think he wants to rip the man limb from limb, but I've set into place several trade agreements that would vanish into thin air if such a thing were to happen."
"You need this to be quiet." Lanto said.
"Yes."
"Something that will make him feel vindicated."
"Go on." Kotero urged.
"But keep this country we're trading with from declaring war back at us. Or perhaps even knowing it was us that did anything."
"That would be ideal." Kotero agreed.
"I have just the thing."
Kotero nodded. "Where should I start?"
This question was also customary. When Gahn-Jihan held audience in the court, Kotero and Lanto would put on a two man show that would rival even the most practiced actors performances. They just needed to know their cues.
Lanto scanned the laws on the wall. He used his finger to keep his place. Finally he said, "There."
Kotero read. "Laws of justification of force on Foreign Rulers?"
"He'll have to be assassinated."
"King Otho?" Kotero asked.
"Indeed. But the law requires that it be done quietly, and with no evidence of Isterak's hand."
Kotero nodded. It was regretful. He didn't necessarily dislike King Otho, but better he die quietly and the next king keep the trade agreements in place than start a messy and bloody trans-oceanic war.
Kotero said, "Audience in the court this morning."
Lanto waved him out of the room. "I'll be there."
Kotero wandered off to try to figure out what the best way to assassinate a foreign king was. Did they have any agents on that continent? Not any that he could think of. At least not assassins that he could think of. They'd have to send someone.
Best to go see the assassin's guild before court, he thought. To see if he could find someone suitable for the job.
It would take the better part of the day.

Chapter 3 - In Which We Meet Our King

2009-10-25T18:16:00.001-07:00

And find out some other stuff. I'm enjoying this once a week chapter posting. I hope everyone else is too.

Additionally we have this awesome Lego pop up book (kind of), this awesome Star Wars Re-edited scene, and one of the strangest, oddly offensive, books ever, published in 1962 about marriage. What are the Swedish doing wrong in 1962?

Oh, well. On to Chapter 3.

***

King Otho was doing his regal pose, standing at the top of the stairs, the sun streaming in behind him through a stained glass window. Light glinted off his crown. His perfect white teeth beamed through his thick, rugged red beard. He was portrait-worthy. Looking down at his faithful advisor Sedrick he said, "Welcome to the life of a King! Women! I need more women!"

Sedrick sighed and said, "Yes, sire. Only it's payday, today, and you have to make at least a brief appearance."

"Payday?" King Otho descended the stairs. "Is it really?"

Sedrick said, "Not actual payday, sire, but, um, children's payday?"

"Oh." King Otho said. "Oh."

"Yes, and they're lined up in the vestibule outside the throne room, and we're paying them, but they wanted to see you. At least some of them did. Anyway, I thought I'd mention it."

"Say no more!" King Otho said. He hurried down the halls, and into the vestibule just off the main throne room to find a line of women and children, a large wooden table with a book and a quill, and each woman signed her name as she went past it, and a man on the other side of the book handed her a gold coin. King Otho's entry took everyone by surprise.

"My Lord!" Several of the women shouted. All of them young and attractive in different ways. Each of the children, a little regal in their bearings.

"My Lord!" This was Guard Captain Varin, who had been standing by the table. He put himself between the King and the line of women and children, who were starting to gravitate this way. The King was looking over the women in line and remembering each one.

"Varin, how are we today?" The King said, absent-mindedly.

"Fine, my Lord, but you should be more careful. This room isn't secure."

"The entire castle is secure." King Otho said.

A look passed between Sedrick and Varin. The king didn't catch it.

Varin said, "Perhaps we could bring some of the children by to visit with you, perhaps arrange for some sleepovers?"

King Otho smiled at the idea. "Yes. Yes, that is a good idea."

"Yes," Sedrick said, "A good idea for another time. For today, you do have a special visitor." Something about the way Sedrick said "special" caught the King's attention.

"Indeed?"

"A dark skinned exotic beauty. You remember the visit from Shonin Lord Gahn-Jihan? His wife? The long dark hair?" Sedrick was leading the King back up the stairs, thinking to himself, look how easy it is. He moves towards the description of a woman, he's so lost in thought he could be stabbed in the back by his own guard captain, he'd never know it.

King Otho said, "Yes. Yes, I do remember her."

"You asked us to find a girl like her? I believe we've done well, my Lord."

King Otho looked into Sedrick's eyes. He said, "Where?"

"The red chamber, my Lord."

King Otho turned to give a good wave to the women and children. Most of them smiled, some of them cooed. Only one or two looked perturbed by the whole situation. And like that he was gone, leaving Sedrick standing on the top step to speak with Guard Captain Varin.

"Where the hell did you find a dark haired girl with features like Gahn-Jihan's wife?" Captain Varin asked.

"We didn't. We found a brunette. He'll be disappointed for roughly three seconds and then she'll drop her top and he'll forget why he went up their in the first place. The man's a lech." Sedrick didn't bother to hide his contempt.

Varin said, "I heard you were in town last night."

Sedrick gave him a wicked look.

"In a bar, no less." Varin continued. "Talking to suspected pirates."

"Your spies are very good, Varin, I'll give you that." Sedrick said. "I was converting pirates to privateers, though. We'll need more of a Naval presence after..." He let the sentence trail off, looked around the room to make sure no one was listening to them, and then said, "Well, you know. After."

Varin said, "How many children are there? Twenty? Thirty?"

The line of women and children just seemed to keep going. They came in, once a month, and were paid a gold coin, by executive order of the King, for, what he called, services rendered. Sedrick shook his head. This was the straw that broke the camel's back, he thought. This was what had finally pushed him over the edge.

Sedrick said, "Our last count was thirty-seven."

"Thirty-seven!" Varin could barely keep his voice down. Women and children, and even the guards assigned to make sure each woman signed her name and took her gold coin all looked over at him, surprised.

Sedrick said, "Calm down."

"Thirty-seven? That can't be right." Varin said, lowering his voice.

"Come on." Sedrick said. "Let's get out of here."

They walked up the steps and through a large wooden door back into the interior of the castle, and walked the halls, back towards Sedrick's office.

"Thirty-seven?" Varin kept saying.

"Why is it so much of a surprise? To be honest, I'm surprised it's not higher. What's he with, three, four women a week? There's bound to be ones out there we don't know about. And seriously, he's probably up there with thirty-eight right now!"

"It's staggering." Varin said.

"I agree. And it's costing us money. Thirty-seven gold a month, to be exact."

"We bring in more than that." Varin said, dismissively.

"It's good money we're just throwing away!" Sedrick looked pissed. Varin knew he'd hit a weak point. Sedrick was always worried about the money.

"Why do you care, Sedrick? Do you want a raise? Don't you have enough?" Varin decided to push Sedrick's buttons a little. See where he went.

"What could we do with that money?" Sedrick asked, returning the question. "Hire more guards? Make more weapons?"

"What do we need with those?" Varin replied, not letting Sedrick drag him in.

"Grandview is constantly over run with invading forces. But we never do anything about it!"

"If you mean Gandermere, they camped on our northern slopes for about a week while they were sieging the Northlander's capital."

"That's exactly what I mean." Sedrick said, his voice hissing like a snakes. "And don't tell me that doesn't bother you."

"I serve at the King's pleasure." Varin said.

"Don't play coy with me." Sedrick said. "You and I have been through this."

They went into Sedrick's office and he slammed the door shut.

Varin said, "Very well. We shouldn't let them do that. I agree. But what can I do? You know he doesn't care."

"That's just it." Sedrick said, sitting behind his desk and smiling. "He doesn't care. But I do. You do. And once he's gone, we're going to make sure Gandermere doesn't ever do that again."

"And we're going to stop paying all those women and children?" Varin asked.

"Trollops and bastards." Sedrick answered. "Yes, that money would be better spent on military matters."

"And a bigger office for you?"

"Bigger office?" Sedrick asked. "The biggest office in the land." He chuckled to himself.

"The king has lots of friends." Varin said.

Sedrick gave him a funny look. "I thought you were taking care of that."

Varin said, "As much as I can. I've done things I'm not proud of."

"Don't worry about that. History will forgive you. The man we serve is incompetent, and the whole Kingdom would do better to have someone else running things. Someone who thinks about how to keep an empire running for longer than it takes to bed a woman."

"Someone like you?" Varin asked.

"Someone like that, yes."

"What about the kids? The mothers? We're just done with them?" Varin asked.

"I'm taking care of that. Don't you worry."

"How?"

"Don't ask questions you don't want the answers to." Sedrick said, a dark look covering his face.

Varin stared him down for a couple of seconds, but decided he didn't really care. He said, "Fine." And exited the room.

Sedrick had already decided how to deal with the prostitutes who came begging at his door once a month. And that's really what they were, wasn't it? Hookers? Whores? Women who had slept with the king, and now were paid a monthly stipend? The idea of sleepovers had come to him just this morning, and he could see it to, the King making time with one of the women he'd already sired a child with, while the kid played next door with a nanny and a room full of toys.

Yes, Sedrick decided, that was never going to happen. The King would be dead soon, and he'd be taking over. Getting Varin on his side had been his stroke of genius. He just had to play to the man's military background. Make everything about the fighting, the soldiers. The war. He needed a war. It would ease the transition. Yes, when a King was assassinated a Kingdom went to war, and he would come out the other end of that war as a man of honor, worshiped by the people for guiding the country through the troubled times. And then, King for life. It wasn't a bad dream.

Gods, it was better than working for this man. This lecherous old idiot.

He couldn't die fast enough.

But he still needed to engineer a war. Who would be the best candidate for that? Gandermere? They were close by. And had used Grandview's lands too often without compensation. Yes. He thought he could just about pull that off. At least technically. But it wasn't enough, was it? No, there were complications.

For one thing, Gandermere was too close. Gods, the names actually sounded the same. Gandermere. Grandview. Was it any doubt that the two countries had been founded at the same time by a pair of friends.

No, he'd need something else. Something more exotic.

Ah.

Shonin Lord Gahn-Jihan.

Yes. Emperor King of the land of Isterak.

A land halfway across the world.

That would make things easier.

Grandview and Gandermere? It would never work. Too many people had friends in one place or the other. Too many families spread across both lands. Pitting brother against brother wouldn't help him. People would just start asking questions, and that could get messy.

But a fight between King Otho and Shonin Lord Gahn-Jihan?

Of course that would work. No one would even ask questions. The cultures were so different, who'd even know why we were fighting them?

Another day, another great idea. Sedrick thought.

Gahn-Jihan had been here only a few weeks ago. And while that dinner with foreign dignitaries had gone all right, who was to know that besides himself and those who were inside the castle walls? All the people knew about the dinner, but would they know what was talked about?

No. It was perfect.

War with Isterak.

A grand idea.

Now, if only he could think of something, some reason to go to war, some slight that the Shonin Lord had made...anything to cause a war to break out.

Well, that brilliant idea could be left until tomorrow.

Chapter 2 - Stories Need Pirates. Sort of.

2009-10-19T16:01:00.000-07:00

Ready for chapter 2? It's down at the bottom somewhere. I was thinking what a good idea this was so that I wouldn't have to actually bother finding links or stuff to post, but of course since I did that someone sent me a good link I have to post.

This is Dungeons and Dragons on the Microsoft Surface. Pretty cool.

Well, ok, I had one link. No wait, I have two.

This is some thermal imaging of bats flying out of their cave. Again, pretty cool.

Also, I enjoyed these ridiculous and unnecessary product reviews.

See, I totally give up trying to find links and I have 3 of them without trying.

OK, on to Chapter 2:

***

On the deck of the "Green Squid" Captain Voosh looked out at the country side as they sailed into the harbor of Grandview and said, "Someone's built a fire out there."

His first mate, Mumphrey, took a look and said, "Probably orcs."

"Or hunters." The Captain said.

"Hunters don't build fires. Scares the animals away."

Captain Voosh got out his spyglass and tried to see if he could spot any orcs, but it was getting dark, and all he could see was a small campfire with some shapes around it. He said, "You're probably right."

Mumphrey didn't bother gloating, just shrugged and said, "We're going in tonight?"

"Landing on the docks. Like a legitimate ship."

Mumphrey's face soured. "This is no way to be pirates."

"We're not going to be pirates for much longer." Voosh said. "They're giving us a conscription."

"What does that mean?"

"It means we'll be legitimate. At least as far as Grandview is concerned. We'll be privateers."

"What the hell is a private ear?"

"Privateers. Like, legalized piracy."

Mumphrey said, "I don't like things that are legal."

Voosh shrugged. "It won't make much difference. There's not a lot of ships on the sea to rob anyway. At least this way we get paid a stipend."

"What the hell's a stipend?"

"Cash. Money. Gold. They'll pay us once a month."

Mumphrey said, "What for?"

Voosh shrugged. "I don't know. I guess for not attacking Grandview ships. And for attacking ships Grandview is at war with."

"Who's Grandview at war with?"

Voosh shrugged again. "No one as far as I know. But if they're signing up privateers then you can bet they're gearing up for one."

"Gearing up for a war." Mumphrey said, mulling it over. "Hm. Interesting."

"Is it?" Voosh asked. He was trying to put his spyglass back in it's case and was watching the black cat sleeping on the deck rail. "Doesn't that cat worry about falling off of there?" Roll over the wrong way, Voosh thought, and boom, a forty foot drop to the ocean. He didn't think the cat would like that very much.

"They like heights." Mumphrey said, looking at the cat. "It's interesting, the war thing, because I can't imagine anyone our king would want to go to war with."

"Our king?" Voosh asked smiling.

"Well, he's going to be paying us. Plus, I was born in Grandview."

"Oh." Voosh continued to smile. "I think the problem is, he's asleep. I mean he's not going to know if he rolls the wrong way, is he?"

"The king?"

"The cat."

Mumphrey said, "Oh. If it bothers you so much go move him."

"It doesn't bother me. I mean, he can sleep where he wants right? As long as he keeps the rats off the ship."

"He has been doing a good job of that."

"Gandermere, maybe?" Voosh asked.

"I think his name is Midnight isn't it?"

"No, I mean the country. Would Grandview go to war with them?"

Mumphrey frowned. Sometimes Voosh made it hard to follow along a single line of conversation. "Why would we fight Gandermere? Over rye bread? Do they even have any other resources?"

Voosh didn't know the answer to that. He was still watching the cat, sleeping soundly as the sun set behind it. He thought of something else and said, "We're supposed to get a new guy, too."

Mumphrey said, "New guy?" Not sure whether this related to the sleeping cat or imminent war discussion.

"Yeah, a sailor. I talked to him before we set out last time, told him to meet us here tonight. Midnight at the Frozen Parrot. Today is Tuesday, right?"

"Yes. It's Tuesday. Who is this new guy?"

"Thought he could be a good replacement for Xarot. Not sure what the hell happened to him."

Mumphrey said, "Probably somebody's husband caught up with him and strung him up."

"Wouldn't surprise me." Voosh said, "Probably the only person that has more girlfriends than the King."

Mumphrey shook his head. "So, this new guy, he's a sailor?"

"Young guy. Maybe sixteen? Seventeen? Got the look about him, though. And he says he's always wanted to be a pirate."

"We're about to not be pirates anymore, remember?" Mumphrey said.

"Oh, right. I hope that's not a problem."

***

Voosh didn't like to walk into a bar through the front doors. He'd explained the reasoning to Mumphrey once, and it went along the lines of this: If everyone looked at you when you came in, that was a bad thing. It meant you were getting too famous. You couldn't be a good pirate if everyone knew who you were. If no one looked at you, that was a bad thing. Bad for the ego, he'd told Mumphrey. It meant nobody cared.

So when they went to the Frozen Parrot, Voosh always insisted on slipping in through the back door, up a flight of stairs, over the alley, and taking one of the tables on the second floor balcony. They usually didn't have trouble finding a table, even when the place was packed. Not a lot of people liked to sit upstairs because it made it harder to run if someone came in looking for you. On the first floor you could always go out a window.

Voosh and Mumphrey took the table closest to the back door and sat down, ordering a pair of drinks and waiting.

Mumphrey said, "What does this kid look like?"

"I believe the word you would use to describe him would be 'strapping'."

"So a big kid?"

Voosh nodded. "Not huge, like that guy that used to load crates by himself, remember him?"

"Something that started with an A, or an M. Not sure, but I know who you're talking about."

"Yeah, he's not that big." Voosh said. "But he's tall and in pretty good shape."

Mumphrey said, "I think he's coming this way."

Looking up and seeing the kid coming Voosh thought, he's not as big as I thought he was. Young, definitely, and perhaps strapping, but he looked younger than Voosh remembered now that he was actually looking at the kid. And he was healthy, but certainly not strapping.

Mumphrey said to the boy, "Sit down. You're Reed?"

"Yes. Indeed, I am." The boy said, taking a seat.

"We should get some drinks." Voosh said. "Are you even old enough to drink?"

"I'll just have some ale, if it's all right."

Voosh said, "Son, you could order Dwarven Whiskey in here and they'd serve it to you, long as you have money."

"I have a little." Reed said, seeming embarrassed.

"First round's on me." Mumphrey said.

"Thank you very much, sir." Reed said, bowing his head a little towards Mumphrey.

"You're going to have to cut that out." Voosh said.

"I'm sorry?"

"You're far too polite to be pirating, lad." Voosh said. "Relax. Be yourself."

"Right. Sorry." Reed shook his head. "I mean right."

"Right as rain." Mumphrey said, though he couldn't imagine why. Voosh was looking at him funny, and he shrugged.

"Stuff goes right into your brain, doesn't it?" Voosh asked, still looking at Mumphrey. He turned to Reed then and asked, "You ever killed a man?"

Reed looked concerned, shook his head and said, "No. I don't believe I have."

Voosh knocked back the rest of his drink and started looking for a barmaid.

Mumphrey said, "Don't worry about it. Most people haven't. Not even some 'real' pirates. You ever stolen anything?"

"Bread?" Reed said, like he wasn't sure if it was considered stealing if it was food.

"Did you need it, or just want it?" Voosh asked.

"I was hungry."

"S'not stealing if it's for need. It's provision procurement."

Reed said, "I'm not sure what you mean."

Voosh said, "Forget it. This stuff is going through me, and I can't seem to flag down a wench. I'll be back with some drinks. You said Ale, right?"

"Yes, sir. I mean, yes."

Voosh left and Mumphrey leaned back away from the table, studying Reed. He didn't look like much. A dirty white shirt, long scraggled hair. He could already pass for a pirate if he were armed. He was certainly dirty enough.

Mumphrey said, "Why do you want to be a pirate, again?"

"I hate this place." Reed said. "I want to get away."

"Where are your parents?"

"Mom died a couple of months ago. I've been on my own since then."

"Where's your father?"

"He hasn't been around for years." Reed said.

Something about the way he said that made Mumphrey pause. He said, "What did your mother do?"

"Ran a jewelry store."

"Jewels?" Mumphrey asked, his eyes widening.

"Not real ones. Fake. Costume jewels. Paste and glass and gilded engravings. Cheap, is what it's called." Reed said. "When she died I sold everything, even the store, and didn't make enough to live for a week after I paid all the outstanding debts. I'm not sure how she did it."

"And you think pirating is the answer?" Mumphrey asked.

"When she died, I decided right then and there, I was going to be a pirate."

"Voosh said you told him you'd wanted to be a pirate all your life."

"I did. I mean, I never thought I'd have the chance. But when she died, I decided to do it. You know. To go for it. Live out my dream."

"Of being a pirate?"

"Why do you keep asking me that?" Reed said.

"Pirating isn't fun. It isn't rescuing damsels and swinging from chandeliers. It's mostly dull and uninteresting work. It's sitting on a boat on the high seas, watching for another boat to come near, not too near, so that it sees you and runs, but near enough that you can catch it, after half a day's sailing, and if you don't manage to get blown apart by it's cannons, you jump on board, kill a few people, and take what they have, which isn't usually much. I've never in my life known a rich or a happy pirate. People get into this line of work because they have nothing else. Some survive, and some don't. The ones who do will tell you, if they had it to do over again, they'd do something else. Probably open a costume jewelry shop."

Reed just looked at him, unsure of what to say. He hadn't thought it would be all chandeliers and damsels, but he'd hoped there would be some of that in there somewhere. Something in the back of his mind told him he hadn't really considered the whole thing. Being on the run. Wanted by the law. What would happen if he were arrested? What would happen if he ended up in a dungeon somewhere because he'd tried to rob a ship and failed?

He started to ask Mumphrey why he became a pirate, but was interrupted by Voosh coming back to the table. He sat down with four drinks and said, "Met our new boss at the bar."

"New boss?" Reed asked. "You're pirates. You don't have a boss."

"We do now." Mumphrey said. "Oh, we forgot to mention. We're privateers now."

"What's a private ear?" Reed asked.

"That's exactly what I said." Mumphrey told him. "Exactly."

"It's true." Voosh said. "Ah, here's our man."

An older man, short and bald, skinny and angry looking, sat down at the table. He had a hood over his head, and he spoke from the shadow it cast over his face. "These are your men?" He seemed to be talking to Voosh.

"Yes, this is Mumphrey and this-"

"I don't need to know their names!" The old man said. "Just take the marks and sign the paper."

Voosh looked vaguely annoyed as he took the paper and a quill and signed his name to it. The mark was handed to him and he folded it up and put it in his jacket pocket.

The old man said, "There. Now you're official privateers in service of King Otho." He started to get up.

Voosh said, "Your drink?"

"Keep it." The old man said, and he disappeared into the crowd.

"Well, that was certainly exciting, wasn't it?" Voosh asked.

Mumphrey looked over at Reed who was frowning. He said, "Welcome to the life of a pirate."

****

Surprise! You wonder where I been?

2009-10-13T19:56:00.000-07:00

I been working, but sounds making danger,
and black bird's chirping

That sounds a lot better in my head because those are lyrics from an EPMD song. I had all these reasons why I hadn't posted yet, one of which was I been working. But that said I didn't really have that much to post this week. Or at least I didn't *think* I did. Til my wife reminded me (inadvertently) that next month is National Novel Writer's Month.

That reminded me that last year I did actually finish a book, but I never let anybody read it because I thought it was terrible. That reminded me that I thought I had lost it when my hard drive crashed sometime in February? Which turned out not to be true because I had a backup of it on a thumb drive I'd forgotten about. Which reminded me that I'd told Travis that I'd let him read it, which in turn reminded me that I had forgotten to do that.

Follow all that? Good.

But the practical point of that is, I had thought a long time ago about using a webpage to write a story on that would just be continuous, because I like things like Order of the Stick, where the guy has been telling a great story for a few years now, and it always makes me wish I could draw so I could have a webcomic, but I can't draw, so having a webcomic just isn't gonna happen.

But then I thought, I could have a webbook instead. And so, while Allie reminded me about NaNoWriMo being next month, it occurred to me that I could just post my terrible book here, one chapter at a time, and possibly drive you all away in a few weeks. So we're gonna give that a shot.

I may have some preamble before chapters or something (like this one, only not as long) and if I find any nice links I'll drop them in there, but for now there's only one thing I want to link (the most awesomest game ever, called Miami Shark) and then chapter one of my "new" book, Skullduggery.

***
"Listen, I'll explain it. What we're saying is this, you find parents, particularly ones with only one kid. I mean, there could even only be one parent, as long as there's only one kid. Got it? Ok. So what we're saying is, that kid has enormous potential, you just have to let it out. You got it? So you kill the parents."

The other orc said, "I don't get it."

Loro sighed. "You kill the parents. This unleashes the pent up potential inside this kid. The one kid. The orphan."

The other orc said, "I still don't get it."

Loro said, "We're both orcs, right? How many Orc Champions have their been since the Battle of Dungore?"

The other orc, younger than Loro, still fresh faced and unscarred thought about that. His name was Akar. He was holding his hand up, looking up in the sky and raising and lowering fingers as he counted. He had three fingers up for a while, then put up a fourth, then put it back down to bring his total back down to three. Then at the last second raised it again and said, "Four."

"Right. Gagnar the Invincible." Loro held up one finger. Akar nodded. "Grush." A second finger, another nod. "Kolo the Black Blade." Three fingers now, and Akar waiting expectantly. "And Grimfist."

Akar said, "That's right. That's the four I got."

Loro said, "And what happened to them?"

"What do you mean?"

"They're all dead. What happened to them?"

"Well, Gagnar was killed by a wizard, I think."

"That's right." Loro was nodding his head, smiling now.

"Grush was killed by Kolo, and then Kolo got killed by a knight, didn't he? A human one from that place in the south where they make that bread."

"That's right, Gandermere's that place. That bread is something with an 'R' I think. Rye?"

"That's it. And then Grimfist was killed by a horse."

"Not just a horse." Loro corrected.

"Oh, right, a horse with a guy on it."

"A guy?"

"What was he? A ranger? He wasn't a paladin was he?"

"Cavalier. The humans call them cavaliers. Come on now, he had a flag and everything."

"I heard the horse did all the work."

"Well, the cavalier trains the horse, so, you know. It's pretty much an even share of the killing."

"Ok, fair enough." Akar had forgotten where this was going. "What was the point of all this?"

"The wizard, the knight and the cavalier, you know what they all had in common?"

Akar shook his head.

"Orphans. All of them. The wizard, Gagnar killed that guy's parents when the wizard was a baby. Kid grows up with vengeance on his brain and becomes one of the most powerful wizards in the world. What does he do? He hunts down Gagnar and kills him."

"Seriously?" Akar was a bit shocked.

"This is what I'm saying. That knight? Kolo killed his mother. Father was long dead, but killing his mom? Kolo made an enemy for life. That kid trained with the sword and shield, found Kolo out in the frozen swamps and put a blade right through him. That cavalier?"

"Grimfist killed his parents?"

Loro shrugged and said, "Well, you know, we're checking on that. I mean we don't really know much about that guy, he just sort of showed up and ran Grimfist over and then left, you know, but it's a pretty safe bet."

"So what you're saying..."

"Of the last four Orc Champions, three of them were killed by humans, two of which were for certain revenge killings, and one is a maybe. Only one of them died like he should have. Killed by another orc in battle."

"So what you're saying is, orphans are what, powerful?"

Loro nodded. "They can be. They get powerful, you know, for vengeance. They get mad, they want revenge, they train themselves, push themselves harder than normal, those guys, they become like death incarnate. They become true warriors."

Akar was starting to catch on but had some questions. "Why single kids?"

"You got two kids they're sad, but they have each other to lean on, you know? They don't get the crazy like a kid left alone."

"Ah."

"You got your wizards, your knights, your cavaliers, apparently. They get tough, they go looking for the killer."

"And our plan is to be that killer?"

"Our plan is to create those orphans. We go around every place we can, we create some orphans who have revenge on the brain. Then, later, when they're trained up they come looking for us."

"And then what?" Akar was still fuzzy on the end goal.

"By then the dragon will be back. And when they find us, they'll find the dragon. And when they find the dragon, they'll kill it."

"But the dragon didn't kill their parents." Akar pointed out.

"No, but humans and dragons, you know, it's all historical. They're always killed by a human."

"Really?"

"You ever hear any stories about dwarves killing dragons? Elves? No, it's always a human. But this dragon, this is a big one. We're going to need more than just one guy out there hacking away at it. We're going to need an army."

Akar said, "And we're going to create that army."

"Now you've got it."

"By traveling around the countryside killing kids parents."

Loro nodded. "That's about the size of it."

"How many have you done so far?"

"Well...we haven't really gotten started yet. I wanted to wait until we had a full group. But now there's like six of us, including you."

Loro and Akar were on a small hill and Loro nodded down to the hill's base where the rest of the orcs had set up camp. They were waiting for Loro to explain the whole thing to Akar, the youngest, who had just joined them. His uncle had sent him to find Loro and join up with the group.

Akar looked off to the north and saw lights. "What's that?" He said. The sun going down was making the lights more visible.

"That's the big city. Grandview. Human city. Where their king lives."

"Are we going there?"

Loro snorted. "Gods no! We're avoiding it. We're going to stay out here in the open country. Hit some of these farm houses around here. See what we can find, you know, kid wise, with orphan potential."

"Tough city, huh?"

"Thousands of people. We'd be slaughtered. They kill us on sight, don't forget that."

Akar nodded. He sat down and Loro sat down beside him and they looked at the lights. Akar said, "How do you get to be an orc champion?"

Loro shook his head and said, "You have to kill lots and lots of people."

Akar looked off dreamily at the lights of the city.

After a while Loro thought they should go back down to the camp, but before he could say so Akar asked, "What do you know about the dragon?"

Loro had to think. He said, "I saw it once, when I was a boy. Scared me to death. Flying over a village I was walking to with my parents. It was huge. Bigger than the hill we're standing on."

"Serious?"

"On my honor."

"No one knows what to do. The shamans say you're the only one that's come up with a decent plan. That's why my uncle sent me to find you. He says if anybody's going to get anything done it'll be you."

Loro took the compliment and smiled. He said, "What are things like back at home?"

"You mean when I left? They say it's going to be a while before the dragon comes back, so there's not a lot to do. They're making weapons though."

"They're always making weapons."

"True." Akar said, "But they're making bigger ones."

"That's a start."

"When will the dragon come?"

Loro said, "No one knows for sure. They say it goes in cycles. It comes and burns down some villages, and eats the burnt bodies that get left behind. Then it goes off somewhere to sleep, or wreak havoc somewhere else. Who knows?"

Akar said, "But it's a long time between them."

"Like I said, last time it came I was a little boy. Now we have to wait a while. Long enough for some of these humans to grow up and not be kids."

Orcs have no concept of years, or seasons. In the far north the weather's always the same, so they measure time from battle to battle and not from season to season. If Loro had known how he would have told the young orc that the dragon came to their neck of the woods every thirty years or so, but since he didn't have the vocabulary to do that it seemed pointless to even try.

Akar had worked out the time in his head though, and he told Loro, "I'll be your age when it comes then, yes?"

Loro nodded, impressed with the boy. "Yes, something like that."

"How long will we be out here, then?"

Loro said, "Could be a while. Don't know how long it will take to find enough kids to orphan. We may need ten? Twelve of them?"

"And we're going to stay down here in the human lands until we do?"

"That's the plan. We stay out of sight, you understand? Guerilla tactics, we keep to ourselves we stay out of the humans way."

"Except the ones we're killing." Akar said.

"Right. Except those. That's why we have no fire for the camp."

Akar said, "Ah."

From the shadows at the base of the camp an orc voice called up, "We're building a fire."

"All right then." Loro shouted back down.

"But you just said-"

"I know." Loro said. "But no fire? That sounds terrible, doesn't it? Besides we're not where anyone could actually see it. And if they did, they'd probably think we were just hunters out, you know, hunting."

Akar said, "Oh."
***

Lots of stuff, for some reason.

2009-10-05T08:48:00.000-07:00

This is gonna be a big one, I think, so take a deep breath and let's get started.

This game is called Huje Tower. Not Huge Tower. Huje Tower. I haven't figured out why. But it has adorable little bacteria from the sewers that are trying to reach the sky. Yeah, you read that right.

Ok, this is on a beer page (I think. Is Tuborg a beer?) But it's a name that tune game that's actually pretty well done. And I like name that tune.

And this game is called Growbox. And it's cool. I like puzzle-y games and it's very puzzle-y. You have to cruise around through little mazes eating things, and sometimes they make you bigger and sometimes they make you smaller and sometimes they change your shape completely. And if you get too big in some places you get stuck. It's like a metaphor for not overeating or something. But it's fun.

Ok, no more fun for you, now we're on to things that annoy me. Remember this? Of course you don't, you're not 135 years old. But you probably know what it is. And you probably saw this (and really, was Billy Zane ever in a more terrible movie? Oh, wait, scratch that). Well now there's this. That's right, somebody's gonna take another shot at it. Oy. Listen, don't get me wrong, I'm all for comic book characters getting tv shows and movies. I love them. But the Phantom, well, it's just never been done well, and I'd love to see it done well, and it's gonna have to be reimagined to get it done well, but...this ain't it. In particular I like that there's a scene in that clip where they imply that part of the problem with the Phantom is that ridiculous looking suit. And then they go on to give the new guy an even more ridiculous looking suit. High comedy.

Speaking of high comedy, remember when Tim Burton was going to do Superman with Nic Cage? Good times, good times. Here's some pics so you can see what might have been.

Again with the Oy, this remake doesn't need to happpen. Ever. But thank God the director from Fast and the Furious Four is still getting work, am I right?

Hey, in the list of things that don't need to get remade, where does this rank? I'm gonna say it's top 100. Wolverines!

Hold on, I'm feeling a little ill. Seriously? Somebody's doing this? Oh. My. Lord. STOP IT.

Really James? The movie's not even out yet and they're already talking sequel. I can't wait to not sit through that either.

Ok, I think we're through the annoyance part of the show. Here's some pics of Seth Rogen as the Green Hornet. Well, some are stuntmen and some are Seth, but it looks, um...ok?

And weirder than weird, here's some pics from the A-Team movie. This is a good list of them. This looks like actual set pics. Isn't Liam Neeson weird with silver hair? That's just odd. Oh, and the guy playing "Howling Mad" Murdock? That's our old friend from District 9. That guy was not even an actor when District 9 was done, he was just like a buddy of the director or something. (*Note: on further review he was a producer. He'd been in one thing before District 9, something called Alive in Joburg, which upon further research turns out to be a short film that the guy who made District 9 made that was the basis for District 9. So, yeah). Anyway he was awesome in D9, and now he's in the A-Team movie. The world is a strange place.

Speaking of strange...Opie Cunningham is making a Cthulhu movie. There's really no comment I can add to that.

Robert Rodriguez Predators movie might not suck. They're doing a most dangerous game thing where predators nab some of the most awesome warriors on earth (which it turns out are serial killers, gang enforcers, assassins, etc.) and then hunting them on the predator home world with predator falcons and predator hunting dogs. Sounds predator-licious.

Other things that might not suck include Gentlemen Broncos. I think I put a trailer up for that before, but check out Sam Rockwell talking about working with Tim Allen. Amuses me.

Things that look cool: the Batman Superman Animated movie. They got Tim Daly and Kevin Conroy back to voice Superman/Batman respectively. Sweetness.

Also in animated movie news, sequel to War of the Worlds that looks cool.

Video game news, Crackdown 2. There's some cool stuff going on in this video.

In more interesting video news, John Lasseter, the awesome guy from Pixar who did Toy Story, Toy Story 2, Cars, etc. talks about how they came up with Buzz Lightyear for Toy Story. Fascinating. (Also, how they picked the colors for Buzz's suit. Neat.)

Other things that fascinate me: 50 extraordinary and attractive billboards. Some of those are very clever.

And speaking of clever, HBO has an impressive thing called HBO imagine. It's like a little puzzle of movies and sound clips that tell a story, but the most interesting to me were the movies that you can watch from 4 different angles.

And just to round things out, trailer for The Crazies. Horror movie. Don't watch if you don't like crazy horror movies, but I find this intriguing for some reason.

Very Little Excuse for a Post This Week

2009-09-22T07:47:00.000-07:00

Johnny Depp is apparently now not playing the Riddler. Which I predicted a few posts ago.
Somebody sat down with Michael Caine and had an interview and basically debunked all those rumors he started after the last batman ended.

Meanwhile Jackie Earl Haley *is* playing Freddie Krueger. Prepare yourself for a rarity, because for once, Hollywood has backed into agreeing with me, albeit most likely accidentally. Even a broken clock is right twice a day and all that jazz. See, there's a lot of complaining going on that Freddie doesn't do funny in this movie and it's all dark and scary and taken too seriously. And I say, huzzah. Finally. One of the things I've always hated about Elm St. Movies is the stupid cheezy dialog (which for the record is almost completely absent from the original movie, which is dark and scary and...well, good.) So, I say bravo. I'd much rather have a scary Freddie than a bizarrely punny Freddie, and I think Haley was a good casting choice. Of course, just to make things sacrosanct in the universe and to annoy the living *#!? out of me they'll make 9 sequels to this dark scary Freddie filled with bad puns.

Not Safe for work language in this video about cell phones in horror movies.

You want bizarre? How bout a museum full of stuffed gophers. That good enough?

Enjoy Cube Colossus if you can. Too much talky for me. Though I kind of like the weird control scheme.

There's another game here called Thunder Attack, that's supposed to be good, but so far I haven't found a browser on any of my machines that has the right plugin for it. Can anyone see it? Maybe it's a hoax. "Haha, remember that time we pretended to make an awesome game and there really wasn't a game? Good times, good times."

William and Sly. I can't even tell you how much I like this. It's pretty, has great sound and music (I leave it on while I work because it's like great white noise) and it's just kind of neat to cruise around and explore.

Things that happened over the weekend.

2009-09-14T07:12:00.001-07:00

Let's see, I moved all the computers around, including swapping hard drives for 3 hours so I could get my Mac back, and ostensibly so I could give Allie the good machine to play WOW on. Really it was to get the Mac back. Going from a 17" monitor to a 21" monitor...my eyes still haven't readjusted to the awesome.

Note, also, that if you have a monitor with a DVI-D and a D-Sub plug, and you have a DVI-D and a D-Sub wire, and the computer has only a DVI-D plug on it, don't use the D-Sub wire with a DVI-D adaptor on it. It just make things look fuzzy, right up until the point where you realize you're an idiot and you plug the DVI-D wire in and things go back to normal. Just saying.

Saw Jennifer's Body with the kids. Funnier than I thought it would be. Actually didn't annoy me. And I don't really care for Megan Fox that much, so seeing her as a bad guy was all right with me. Not sure how that worked out. Definitely rental material, or maybe dollar theater.

I'm gonna do a little different format for the links here, just bear with me.

The Beatles Rock Band Intro - Looks awesome. I would totally watch a movie or a cartoon done in this style, especially if it was about the Beatles. Does the game have any of this in it, or is it just the intro? I assumed it was just Rock Band with Beatles songs. Is that not true?

Ingrlorious Basterdz Villain - This guy is awesome. He was great in Inglorious Basterdz and now he is going to be a villain in the Green Hornet movie with Seth Rogen. He should be a villain in the Green Lantern movie (which we discussed last week may or may not get made). Wouldn't he be a great Sinestro?

Pictures of the Green Hornet movie - With Seth Rogen. Yep, it's apparently shooting. Enjoy the pics and then wonder if it will be awesome or terrible. I kind of like Seth Rogen, but this seems like it might be fail. Maybe Green Hornet is just one of those properties that you can't make a serious, dark movie out of like Batman, or maybe this is just a bad idea. I'll wait for a trailer to make a decision. Maybe the dude up above will make it awesome.

My new favorite trailer mashup - Just full of win. Dark Knight vs. Toy Story.

Ridiculous Japanese Game Plot - This game might or might not be about porn. I have no idea. It's just ludicrous though.

Scariest Movie ever? - Supposedly. This is what they're saying. Everyone seems to think it's awesome. I'll have to check it out.

Gentlemen Broncos - Seriously funny. Like Sam Rockwell, like the guy who plays the writer (from the fabulous Flight of the Conchords). Looks great.

Robots shoot Pool - Slowly. But still cool.

Guitar Hero for the C64 - Now this is funny. That's totally what it would have looked like too.

Hotel made out of hotel key cards? - Strange. Very strange.

Football Season Begins. I write blog post.

2009-09-08T20:21:00.000-07:00

Yay, football. I watched a lot of it today.

Also, I started this post on Wednesday I think, so check when it's posted, because right now I'm about to post it and it's Sunday night. (EDIT: I started it on Tuesday. So apparently Blogspot just takes whatever day I start editing a post and marks that as the day it was posted. Fantastic. I could make it look like I posted every day. I'll just start a post every day and...who am I kidding, I'm too lazy to even do that.)

Ok, we good? All right then, let's get started.

Some kind of parkour game here. You're running on building ledges, jumping over things, through windows occasionally...I don't know. It's kind of addictive. But it will give you a headache. The screen shakes a lot. I mean like your monitor is stuck in one of those things they have at Home Depot that shakes the paint cans up. It's kind of annoying. And it seems to never end. But I click on it and play it again occasionally...

Super ultra violent video. Starring 12" GI Joe figures. Kinda creepy. I think it's the unchanging expressions on their faces. Bizarre and fun.

Holy Kri-zolie! Solomon Kane Trailer! Somewhere in the recesses of my mind I heard this movie was being made but I had little hope for it because...well, lots of reasons. First of all you may or may not know who Solomon Kane is. Well, he was created by Robert E. Howard, who had a much more famous character, that got not one, but two movies (the second of which is, how shall I put this, not good. I mean it's fun in a cheesy way, but really, just kind of crap, as Eddie would say.) So I thought, Oh, it'll be terrible and they'll screw the character all up and I can rant about it later if anyone ever notices the movie's existence, but here, now, they've gone and intrigued me. That trailer looks, um, decent. Like I really want to see that. I love Solomon Kane. He's awesome. (Hint, hint, someone buy me a book for Christmas).

More Awesome HERE! That's the trailer for the movie Plan 9. That's the remake of the Ed Wood Classic, Plan 9 From Outer Space. How cool is that? Plus the original was delivered in 1959, so this is like the 50th anniversary celebration. Nicely done. See, I view this differently than the knuckleheads trying to remake The Birds, because here's the thing: both movies are classics, but they're classics for different reasons. The Birds is like Steak and Potatoes. It just goes together well. Plan 9 From Outer Space is like Ketchup on Eggs. Some people really love it, but most people just kind of go, "huh" and then eye you bemusedly while you eat it, tolerating without hate, it's just kind of a weird thing that's there. So, I think the remake of Plan 9 will be like Salsa on Eggs, cause it's a little updated, and now a lot more people are like, "oh, that sounds good." So, yeah. There. The Plan 9 remake is like salsa on eggs. Bow down before my mad simile-constructing skills.

It's awesome movie week here at Madtoad Enterprises, apparently, so yeah, I'm gonna throw a little Black Dynamite your way. (Thanks Travis). Yes that's a real movie. Yes it's coming out soon. Yes they're serious. (That's acutally Michael Jai White playing Black Dynamite. I love that guy. First he was Tyson in Tyson, then he played Spawn, and then he kind of disappeared. But I've always thought he was a good actor. And in the last few years he was the voice of Green Lantern in the incredibly awesome Justice League cartoon, and then he had a nice cameo in what should have been the Oscar Winner for Best Picture Last Year, and now he's going to be in this and in Robert Rodriguez's Predators, coming next year, so I'm kind of stoked. By the way, he's credited as a writer on this movie). By the way, how lame is it that in the movie TYSON the guy playing TYSON got 3rd billing? That's kinda messed up.

Thanks to B-Fish for the following: Cat can't figure out how to get a drink. Kitty has a drinking problem.

Laborious Posting

2009-08-31T21:05:00.001-07:00

It was all you could do to think that I'd use the fact that it's labor day as an excuse to not post today, effectively killing my monday posting ritual that has been going for an astounding, what, 5 weeks? 4? I don't even know. Travis, how many weeks in a row is this?

See, it didn't happen. I posted anyway. So bleh.

Clearly Hollywood will pay for any script that allows random B-list actors to shoot at each other for whatever the heck reason they can think of. Can you imagine this? All the world's greatest assassins get together to battle for 10 Million dollars in some random sleepy town? I'll probably watch it though. See, this is how they get me.

Disney buys Marvel. Can't wait for the Micky Mouse, Spiderman crossover comics.

Adopt-A-Dog segment goes horribly awry.

A brief primer on dimensions, up to the 10th. Apparently this has been floating around the internets for a while, but I had never seen it.

For those of you who love fast food, here are 10 secret menu items you can get at, perhaps, one of your favorite places. Mental Floss, by the way, is one of those pages I can get lost on pretty easily for hours.

How to destroy the Earth. You know. If you need that kind of information for any reason.

First Citiwide Bank. How do you make money?

So A-Team casting news is apparently being scooped by the MMA now, since this guy was apparently going to fight this guy (I don't know any of these guys. The only MMA person I know is Kimbo Slice and that's only because his name is Kimbo Slice. I don't even know if he's good.) But now, instead of those two guys fighting those two guys are going to NOT fight so that that first guy can play B.A. in the A-Team movie.

Um. Ok. Sure.

That IMDB link for A-Team is another place where I should point out that they have ludicrous and conflicting information all on one page. According to that page both Common and the Game (both rappers, incidentally) are playing B.A. in the A-Team movie. Clearly that's not true. Unless both of them and the MMA guy are all gonna play B.A. at different parts of the movie. Maybe they play him at different ages or something, or maybe the plot involves B.A. having his brain transplanted into different bodies. Come to think of it, I'd watch that too.

Battle for the Ages.

2009-08-29T17:04:00.000-07:00

THERE have been many great battles in our time. Ali vs. Frazier. Larry Bird vs. Dominique Wilkins in the 1988 Eastern Conference Finals. LL Cool J vs. Kool Moe Dee. Alien vs. Predator. But these can not prepare you for the incredible battle that takes place during Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus. Oh yes, I watched it.

Listen, I'm not talking about the battle between a badly rendered octopus and a shark so puppety it makes the cast of Thunderbirds look downright realistic. Oh no. I'm talking about the battle between the cast of this movie to one-up each other in the championship for the worst acted movie in the history of mankind. I don't know how they did it. I'm not sure how they kept it up. From the minute the movie started it was like a tour de force of forced dialog, strange looks into the distance, and unbelievably awkward romance.

First of all, it opens with a helicopter pilot doing something bad, and here it almost lost me. I was close to just abandoning the whole thing, because this guy was so terrible that I couldn't bear to watch him try to pretend he was really talking to Naval HQ over the radio (who at one point reminded him, over the radio mind you, that this mission was so top secret that if anything should go wrong the government would disavow all knowledge of him).

But then Deborah Gibson showed up. Yes, that Debbie Gibson. And thus I discovered that our friendly helicopter pilot was only preparing me for a battle for the ages. A masterpiece. Actors so wooden you'd think they were carved from trees. It is delicious. From the overbearing boss who fires Debbie in one of the most awkward "I'm supposed to be unlikable" scenes in recent history to the Naval commander who actually says the phrase "When we find the beast, we're sending him to hell!" to the Irish professor whose accent is so random that the script had to constantly remind me he was from Ireland. (And it did.)

There's an incredibly awkward romance between Deborah and the Japanese scientist. There's a painful bunch of extras who are supposed to be military security (who wear their sunglasses even when they're guarding people in a dark room). There's even a submarine commander who's accused by his pilot of being INSANE! But then, along comes Lorenzo Lamas and he reminds us that there will never be any actor so bad with so much work to his name for a reason. The man is amazing. I don't know how he does it. It must be seen to be believed. I'm not even sure what he's supposed to be doing in the movie. Who is he? He appears to be in charge of the military (sometimes) but he's wearing a cheap black suit, sporting a pony tail, and never really seems to tell us who he is. He's generic government boss guy. But he's oh so jerky. He makes racist comments. He makes bad puns. He yells at people over a radio. He calls the Mega Shark "Sharkzilla" for God's sake. It is un-be-liev-able.

And this doesn't even take into account that the movie has, and please, I don't want to oversell this, it has THE GREATEST SCENE EVER PUT TO FILM. When the airline passenger looks out the window and says...no. You HAVE to see this to believe it. You'll know when it happens, and hopefully you'll laugh as hard as I laughed and for so long I was afraid I was going to wake up everyone in the house. It was outstanding. Ok. I'm gonna move on to more stuff.

I like to do some game industry related stuff since I'm, you know, related to the game industry, so I sort of look around for anything game related that is cool enough to post. So, there's this, a documentary called Tilt: The Battle to Save Pinball. Basically the pinball industry has become the video slot machine industry, and these guys were told to revolutionize pinball or they'd be fired, and they did, and then they got fired anyway. It's totally worth watching the trailer for some cool shots of the machine they put together.

So, last week I said the Avatar movie looked "meh" and then made a joke about getting sued by them for that. Well, now someone's suing them. You may not have heard of Delgo (God be with you if you have, or if you've seen it). At the risk of my immortal soul I'm going to put the trailer to it right......here. Careful with it. It will hurt you. But now there's this Delgo vs. Avatar lawsuit going on. Because apparently the people that made Delgo thought that maybe James Cameron ripped off their movie. Um...good luck winning that one. Delgo, by the way, is apparently the Floppiest Flop that ever Flopped. Good read.

Is this a viral trailer for Cloverfield 2? Topless Robot thinks it is, and it is exactly the sort of wacky, low budget viral stuff they put on the web for the original Cloverfield. I'm not buying it yet, but, who knows.

So apparently there are buckets of DC Movies in the works, including a Flash movie, a Bizarro Superman movie, 2 Green Arrow movies, and Shazam, which was supposed to have this guy as a bad guy (playing this guy, which we may have noted before here on the madtoad page). Now, some of this is intriguing to me for different reasons.

The Bizarro movie is apparently being put together by the guys who did Galaxy Quest, so that could be incredibly watchable.

The Flash movie reminds me that at one point in time Ryan Reynolds (who was going to be Deadpool for Marvel, but apparently dumped them to become the new Green Lantern for DC) claimed he loved the Flash (one of his favorite characters ever) and that he was interested in the role. Then...nothing happened, and suddenly he was Deadpool.

One of the Green arrow movies is Supermax, which is an idea I love (which I'm pretty sure we also discussed here before) and there was talk of this guy playing Oliver Queen which is a great idea as far as I'm concerned. But would you do two Green Arrow movies at the same time? What's the other one about? Who would be in it? What story would it tell? Intriguing.

Also, I don't think that Shazam movie is going to be worth the trouble. The problem really is with the concept. See Billy Batson is a little kid who turns into Shazam. Which means, that by default it would have to be a kid's movie. They wouldn't do dark Superman Returns or Batman Begins stuff with a little kid would they? That would be kind of creepy. Though given The Rock's predilection for making kid's movies, maybe that would all work out in the end? Who knows?

But DC is having all kinds of movie trouble. And not just Nolan not being ready to work on Batman 3. Did you know there was a Justice League movie in development and it got canned, partially because of trouble with Australia's economy? That's weird right, but here's the best part. Apparently DC didn't learn their lesson because now Green Lantern is having the same problem! (That link includes what I believe is a photoshopped Ryan Reynolds in a Green Lantern outfit. Outstanding.) And just because I don't think I've mentioned it before, the GL movie is being directed by Martin Campbell. If you don't know who that is, just know that he directed the (awesome) Casino Royale.

See, this is what happens, I go looking for something like Campbell up there to give you guys a nice link and I end up discovering things like Martin Campbell is remaking The Birds. Then I start clicking links and it looks like he's NOT remaking it. Or that the studio pulled the plug, or back burnered it or something (so that link to the movie is just outdated and those things never go away). But then I read that they're remaking Rosemary's Baby (trailer) and that one still seems to be going strong. See, I just get sucked into these things and then it's six hours later and I'm reading the internet and Allison's like "What are you doing?" And I'm like "I don't know..."

So then I was reading about these dudes making both The Birds (which they're not doing now because they can't think of anything cool that birds do, which was strike one, and watch Alfred's movie, I mean it's a masterpiece, the birds don't have to do anything, they just sit around and look creepy and then attack people in big swarms and...forget it. You're clearly not getting it. Hitchcock knew how to make a movie. You two guys...) and Rosemary's Baby (you forgot I paranthesised that sentence up there didn't you? I went on for a while there. Like I'm doing again here. And on top of that I made up a word) which they're being defensive about in that article because someone was saying "don't remake it" and they start lambasting that person by saying "We have this other script that isn't like that movie". Then why call it that? Then they're like "We changed the name to The Sacrifice." Great. Stop calling it the Rosemary's Baby remake then, and don't get so uppity. Chill.

Meanwhile, this is what Chris Nolan is doing: Inception. Again, looks intriguing, but I have no idea what it's about.

So, yeah, there's that.

Then, I thought, all I seem to do is complain about superhero movies and things, so I thought I'd give you a couple of trailers for moies that I am actually looking forward to.

Cemetery Junction as Travis pointed out when he sent me this link (thanks Travis!) this is how a teaser trailer should be done. Doesn't show a single frame of the movie, but I was laughing through most of it and would go watch it based on this alone.

And The Men Who Stare At Goats. That's a bizarre title right? What if I told you Ewan McGregor was in it? Does that pique your interest? How bout if I said Jeff Bridges was in it? Those 2 are nerd poster boys what with one being young Obi-Wan and one being Flynn from Tron. Ok, how bout if I give you Keyser Soze as well? Yeah, he's in it. Oh. And some dude named George. But you know, whatever. This guy's in it, so it's a must see. (And I didn't even mention that the T-1000 and possibly D.B. Cooper were in it). It's like somebody let me cast a movie.

Tuesday is the new Monday.

2009-08-22T23:23:00.000-07:00

I don't know what happened there, I was all rolling on Monday posts and now I'm on Tuesdays. It's like days of the week have no meaning for me anymore. Weird right?

I feel that it's my solemn duty as a game developer to bring you information about games, at least every once in a while, so I throw up trailers to games or game website occasionally (as you may have noticed). However, since the recent problems with blog lawsuits and people actually going to court for saying "bad" things about people or products, I'm not going to tell you that I think this trailer looks ridiculous. That might get me in trouble. I'm just going to post this and make a couple of comments. Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker is a new PSP game being released soonish. Now, this is not to say anything bad about it, I'm just pointing out that those 5 words don't go together. It's like somebody has a random English word generator and picked out 5 random words. If Metal Gear Solid wasn't already a license you could look at it and say "Those words don't go together." I mean, really, what do they mean? This is in addition to the "fact" that Metal Gear Solid 2 (Which had a 95% rating from the critics, so, that's good) has quite possibly the most convoluted story line ever written by human beings. It makes War & Peace look like the 3 bears. I mean seriously, just go to that page and try to comprehend the plot. Again, not saying anything bad you lawsuit happy lawyers, just saying, there it is.

What happens when some nerdy mathematicians get together and start discussing things like, say a zombie apocalypse? Well then you get a thoroughly detailed Mathematical analysis of a zombie apocalypse. That's what happens.

James Cameron's Avatar trailer. Not Avatar the Last Airbender. This is the other Avatar movie. It looks....meh. I can't even, I mean, it just...What happened to the dude that made Aliens? And The Abyss? And Terminator? And Terminator 2? And True Lies? And Piranha Part 2: The Spawning? (By the way, possibly the best flying piranha movie ever made). Did the giant piles of money from Titanic make Cameron crazy? I'm going to get sued for that. But I believe, from this trailer, that the (POTENTIAL SPOILERS * WATCH TRAILER BEFORE READING) dude in the wheel chair is scientifically placed in the body of the big blue elf in an effort to spy on the big blue elves so the space marines can attack them, but then he falls in love with big blue elf girl and he doesn't want to betray the big blue elf people and then everybody learns a valuable lesson. That's just my guess, and to be honest, that doesn't sound particularly interesting to me. Maybe it's just me. I'm sure it will be beautiful.

On the other hand, the trailer is up for Venture Bros. Season 4. Man, that show just is so awesome I can't even handle how awesome it is. I need to rewatch the first 3 seasons before it starts just to get myself prepared for it.

How bout a list of the 10 Most Expensive Cars in the world? Tim will be happy to note that the Veyron is number one. My house costs less than, well, all of these cars.

Which means I'll need to buy one of the 10 Least Expensive Cars in America.

Then I'll need insurance. It's cheap to insure these cars. But not these.

I may have posted the shaky cam version of the Wolfman trailer prior to this, but this is the official trailer. And again I say...meh. I don't know what it is, I *like* werewolves. I really do. When I was a kid I liked werewolves more than vampires. I wrote a story outline once for an epic book I was going to write where werewolves killed vampires. But the movie just looks...I don't know. Kind of disjointed? A little dull? I think there's going to be a lot of hand wringing and guilt, and not enough cool werewolfy stuff.

Also, what's up with Anthony Hopkins? It struck me that with Benecio Del Toro as his son, this is the second time Hopkins has been, well, I don't know, sort of a Spanish father I guess? I mean, maybe in Wolfman he had a Spanish wife, which is fine. But I felt like I was seeing him in Zorro again, remember that? Where he was the old Zorro? And was a Spanish Don? And I forgot, he also played Pablo Picasso (born in Spain). He knows he was born in Wales, right? You know what's really weird? He played Othello. Um...you know, one of the central themes of Othello is that Othello's a black guy, right? I guess they decided to ignore that part. Oh, well he did it in blackface apparently. Or maybe he's just really tan. That makes it better, I guess. This appears to be par for the course for British Shakespeare. That's Laurence Olivier.

By the way, looking up Laurence Olivier actually led me to this webpage, which is right up there with the creepy.

Haha! Gotcha!

2009-08-14T15:38:00.000-07:00

See how I tricked you there? I had you thinking I was gonna update every Monday, but then BAM! I hit you with a post on a Tuesday night. I know you were all hanging on the edge of your seats, right? Right.

Anyway, I continued to dodge the bullet that is GI Joe by having the kids go see Ponyo on Saturday. Which, by the way I believe I actually predicted a few posts ago when I put the Ponyo trailer up. It's adorable, magical, amusing, and very, very Japanese.

You know what might be even more asinine than a ridiculous remake that no one needs to do? How about a prequel to the ridiculous remake that you already made and it flopped. Apparently they're in script review for a prequel to the horrible Jason Statham remake of Death Race 2000. Don't think that I blame Statham for that. I love the dude, he does great action flicks, but the new Death Race was "meh" at its best and "why am I here?" at its worst.

And while Statham will hopefully not be involved the sexy sci-fi siren Milla Jovovich (who apparently can't get enough of Resident Evil movies) is doing something called "The Fourth Kind". In case you're wondering what that title means, check out this and refresh your memory. (That trailer's kinda creepy, no?)

Did I mention the USFL is coming back apparently?

I can't tell what's more awesome here, either the Patrick Warburton voice-overs or the actual burgers themselves.

Allie read this book and liked it and now it's a movie. Directed by that dude that did Lord of the Rings. By the way, he also produced District 9, which I have to say was extremely fantastic. It's depressing that Transforminators (They're eating all our sand!) will make 10x more money than it will.

This might be the creepiest thing ever.

First of all, the headline on this next link, taken out of context, just evokes giggles in me. Secondly, wanna see a building do a flip? Of course you do.

Oh look, the entire alphabet.

15 different ways to tie your shoes. Or something. I have no idea why these things fascinate me.

So apparently, Nicholls State University's old mascot (they're called the Colonels) was racist. Or something. You can see him here in this article. So they decided to update it. This is what they came up with. Apparently now he's a communist video game boss from the late 80's. What's most amusing about this is how hard it is to actually find a picture of the old mascot (a google image search turned up almost nothing for 5 pages). Or perhaps it's the fact that there are dozens of articles about this controversy, but most of them don't show any comparison of the two mascots. This one, for example, shows neither the old nor the new mascot (though it does show the guy the actual mascot was based on). What ever happened to journalism?

Probably the same thing that's happening to the movie industry. Shamelessly stolen from a Travis email: Sometimes Hollywood forgets they already made a movie.

I have serious GI Joe issues.

2009-08-09T21:23:00.000-07:00

I wish I could Dan Shanoff my way into writing a post a day but I just don't have that kind of free time. To be fair, Shanoff does that for a living, writing a post a day for Sports Illustrated, so I guess if that was all I had to do everyday I could probably pull one together. And he takes weekends off.

That being said, this is going to be the third week in a row that I've put up a new post on a Monday. Well, technically this is going up Sunday night, but that's fairly consistent for me.

Atkins is like the best diet ever with the exception of the fact that I don't have anything to drink except tea, water or coffee. It's like I'm imprisoned on an airplane in 1974. I can't even have milk. I can have heavy cream, but that's not so much for drinking. The food though, is exquisite. Bacon, shrimp, garlic, heavy cream and Parmesan cheese came together Saturday night for a little brouhaha and they were so fantastic I almost forgot I was drinking my 734^th gallon of unsweet tea with them. Vaden, thanks for the recipe.

One of the things I can't have, back to my problem with the drinks, is sodas. That's mostly because I can't get over the horrid aftertaste that all natural sweeteners seem to have conspired to have, or I could drink diet sodas, but that's neither here nor there. What is here (and there) is this awesome soda fountain that's making it's debut in like 10 Jack in the Box chains somewhere in Atlanta (maybe?) that dispenses something like 100 different drinks. The video contains some foul language from the kids there who are mystified by it's magical properties, so be forewarned.

Oh, I'm still not done complaining about the GI Joe movie, by the way. You wanna know how much they've sold out? They're selling sneakers now. Awesome. (Note: I still haven't seen the travesty myself yet, but Kayla and Brandon will help me survive it on Saturday).

This version of the GI Joe movie I would have watched, btw.

Iron Man 2 footage. Watch it quick before somebody loses their mind and removes it.

I'm stuck on the Joe's now. Check out some topnotch humor (I know it's old) from McSweeney's. A Cobra Grunt's Diary. My favorite entry: June 28, 1987 We sure seem to have a lot of ninjas on the COBRA payroll.

Also, there's a new diary up by the same guy. I agree with the IO9 writers. I want him to script the next movie.

Sci-fi Wire has an interview with the screen writers of Star Trek (awesome) about the sequel and who or what might be in it. Right now they're sure they're going to put the quote “He's dead, Jim.” in there. Which I'm all in favor of. We might also see this guy play Harry Mudd. Which is cool, but, you know, not really action-y enough for me. I'd rather see Khan. Maybe from this guy? Feel free to lambast me for that idea, but I'll make my arguments later if you do. Possibly, say, next Monday? Let's see how the comments go.

Insanewich is insane!

2009-08-03T18:20:00.000-07:00

It only took you a week to get your capital letters back. You can thank Mr. Tact for that. What's been happening? Well, our AC went out, which is fun in Texas in August. 96 degrees in the house is not a good look, you know?

Doctor put me on the Atkins, so I'm carb free for a while, we'll see if I can stay on it and lose some weight and not be a borderline diabetic. So if you see me, don't offer me candy. Or cookies. Or cake. Or sugar in those little sugar packets. Or fried things. If you have meat I'll accept that. Just meat. Or cheese, cheese is good. Or if you carry around some deviled eggs, or maybe some green beans. I eat a lot of bacon now. Bacon is good.

Steak, Bacon, Pork Chops, Chicken Wings, Sausage, Green Beans, Spinach, Eggs, Omelets, Cheese, Pork Rinds and unsweet Tea. This is a diet I may be able to handle. What I can't have, is an Insanewich:

Insanewich's are Insane!

Planet Hulk. Teh Awesome.

Interesting Sync Up between Back to the Future I & II where they had to replace the original girlfriend with Elizabeth Shue. Zemeckis had to reshoot a lot of that, and kept it pretty accurate to his original script even 4 years later. It's weird that Claudia Wells just sort of disappeared isn't it? Her mother got cancer apparently, but she just sort of vanished for 20 years after that.

Mini-Ninjas. Now here's a game I'm looking forward to. Thanks to Eli for the tip...

I probably posted this music catch game before, but I dig it, so this may or may not be unoriginal content.

Nice physics puzzle game called Collider.

Stargate Universe trailer. I didn't care for Stargate but other people I know did. It's weird seeing Lou Diamond Phillips there, isn't it? He's like the new, young Adama from BSG. Or something.

Amazing beach art.

capital punishment.

2009-07-27T11:01:00.001-07:00

since no one cares what i think (clearly, cause you don't comment on my blog, and seriously, it's the only currency my blog has, so you know, throw me a frikkin bone people!) i'm punishing you all by refusing to use capital letters. i know, i know, capital letters means you're yelling, so consider this like the silent treatment. only it's the undercase letter treatment. you'll get your capitals back when i'm good and ready.

movies i'm looking forward to:

tr2n, which has now thankfully been renamed tron legacy or some such rot. Who cares? it's got jeff bridges (the original flynn) and looks pretty darn cool. how come nobody does good sequel names anymore, like aliens, or....actually, sequel names aren't usually very good are they? i guess they could have called it trons... (how come bruce boxleitner's not in it? is he busy? does scarecrow and mrs. king still come on? i don't think it does.)

book of eli. denzel washington being all cool and stuff in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. gary oldman being a creepy bad guy. mila kunis being all actiony and stuff. word.

tv i'm looking forward to:

amc is doing a remake of the prisoner. i used to like watching this but didn't understand it until i was much older. looks cool though. it has magneto and that dude that could talk to dennis quaid thirty years in the past on his ham radio. good music too. that trailer is 9 minutes, btw, so save it til you have some time. also, if you're interested, you can apparently watch the entire 1967 series here.

random miscellany:

if you could travel back in time what would you do? you could go to hollywood and make movies, couldn't you? i could. i'd go and write awesome scripts like star wars and usual suspects and cast awesome 50's actors in the parts, and they wouldn't be nearly as good, but it would make me laugh. (i could see bogart and peter lorre and maybe ronald reagan or somebody in the 1940's version of usual suspects, right?) well, somebody decided they'd make ghostbusters in the 40's/50's and they even made a trailer!

ridiculously interesting clip on the history of gi joe, leading up to how we got the movie we're about to loathe. a few things of note:

- 0:21 seconds into the clip - that's a cartoon of a guy punching his fist through another guy. i'm almost sure of it.
- 0:23 gratuitous plastic white tiger...was that a gi joe figure?
- 0:40 robert mitchum movie "the story of gi joe" is the namesake for the figure. ooh, i need to put robert mitchum in my usual suspects movie.
- 0:59 there's a slight village people feel going on here, but...is that dude in the front a black panther?
- 1:13 that ridiculous beard. i had one of those. that beard was fuzzy.
- 1:17 the red beard. man, that doesn't look right. he should see a doctor.
- 1:24 kung fu grip.
- 1:41 the new 8" super joe lineup apparently includes no budget for "clothes". they are rocking some sweet leopard print boxers though. nice.
- 1:56 that second comic that comes out on your screen is gi joe #21, one of the greatest comic books of all time (imo). it has no dialog. it is a 22 page ninja (snake-eyes) infiltrating a cobra base to rescue scarlet (again, i'm not bitter about the romance plot that's being ruined in the movie. no, wait, yes i am.)
- 2:23 that guy calls out ripcord like he was one of the main dudes, because they put him in the movie. but while snake eyes and scarlet were both series 1 figures (1982) and duke was a series 2 figure (1983), ripcord didn't exist until 1984. and he was so popular he was discontinued in 86. nice.
- 2:44 the gi joe drug elimination force? really? did we sell that to kids? also, the dude doing the voiceover says "takes on the growing drug trade". like kids were pretending their joe's were battling in colombia over cocaine fields? really? does anyone remember this?
- 3:10 i remember sigma 6 (vaguely) but i don't remember either of those movies.
- 3:26 nice gratuitous boob shot of the baroness. thank you sienna miller.
- 3:53 and it's done.

final cast for 1940's usual suspects:

alan ladd ... michael mcmanus (in 1994, stephen baldwin)
cary grant ... dean keaton (in 1994, gabriel byrne)
boris karloff ... fred fenster (in 1994, benicio del toro)
peter lorre ... todd hockney (in 1994, kevin pollack)
humphrey bogart ... roger 'verbal' kint (in 1994, kevin spacey)
ronald reagan ... dave kujan (in 1994, chazz palminteri)
robert mitchum ... kobayashi (in 1994, pete postelthwaite)
lloyd bridges ... jack baer (in 1994, giancarlo esposito)
lauren bacall ... edie fineran (in 1994, suzy amis)
spencer tracy ... jeff rabin (in 1994, dan hedaya)

and yes, i spent half an hour looking people up for this movie. sue me. you would have watched this.

I'm just going to keep ranting.

2009-07-22T14:49:00.000-07:00

At this point I've given up on anything on this blog except me being angry at Hollywood movies. Why? Because it's something I care about and I just don't understand the pure crazy that spews out of Producers/Directors/Actors sometimes. I get that they don't care about the franchises I care about, but I don't get how they don't like money. The Dark Knight is filled with money. You know why? Because they made people like me happy. Bat-Guano-Crazy Batman fans were happy and look, a good movie, and look, money. Lots of it.

So it's inexplicable to me that the GI Joe movie even exists. Here's a nice ranty review from someone who saw a sneak preview. I have no reason not to believe everything this guy says. Why? Well, shortly after the review several "spoiler" filled reviews hit the web. About 5 in 6 of them were glowing, "OhmygoshIcan'tbelievehowGOODthatwas", Go see it in theaters it's totally worth the money reviews. Why does this make me suspicious? Well, I've seen the trailer...

But what makes the ranty review up there so more likely to be accurate is the fact that he is telling basically the same story the gushy happy awesome reviews are, except he doesn't sound like an idiot saying things like "Oh, my gosh this might be the greatest action movie EVER!!!11!!"

I could spend all day listing my problems with GI Joe, but I'm gonna just point out 3 things, then I'll rant about something else (Green Lantern, so if you don't care just go to google and look for anything more interesting than me ranting about Hollywood for 3 pages).

1.) Look at this logo. That's from the Cartoon Episode Guide. What does it say there right below GI Joe. It says "A Real American Hero" right? Except that inexplicably, in the movie, GI Joe is made up of the best soldiers from 10 NATO countries. Um...why? Oh, right. You don't care about our source material. Thanks for making that clear up front.

2.) Romance subplots - a.) Duke and the Baroness once almost got married. Wh-Wh-Wha?!?!? No, thanks, didn't need that. That's a stupid movie cliche, and thank you Director and screen writer for reminding me why you're hollywood hacks. Of course the totally hot bad guy chick and the main character good guy dude used to be in love. Why wouldn't they be. There's only 6 billion people on the planet. It makes perfect sense that those 2 people would end up in this situation. Riiiiight.

b.) Scarlet and (not Snake-Eyes) Ripcord. See, Snake-Eyes and Scarlet have always been a thing, in the comics, the cartoon, in the whole backstory of GI Joe. He's mute and silent and the best character in the show (we were kids, and he was a ninja, there was no way he wasn't ending up the coolest character in the show) and she was the totally hot red head (again, we were kids, of course she was the hottest chick on the show. She had a crossbow for God's sake.) They had a cool relationship where they never got together but you could tell they both wanted to. It was extremely subtle for a kid's franchise, and maybe one of the best things a cartoon/comic/toyline ever pulled off in the subtlety department. Seriously they should get an award for that somehow, I'm not even sure how they did it, but ask any GI Joe fan and they'll know. So who's Ripcord? Who knows? Some cheap crappy knockoff Joe character they made up for the movie, or ripped from one action figure 9 toy lines ago that nobody remembers or cares about. But he's played by Marlon Wayons (God help me, I don't want to hate Marlon, he's not even a bad actor, but between this and the Dungeons and Dragons movie it's like I killed his parents in a past life or something and now he's haunting me) and Marlon Wayons is chatty, and of course the writer and director of this movie believe subtlety is for French movies about red bicycles and we'll be having none of that, so Scarlet likes Ripcord. Great.

3.) Destro is Scottish, and his family hates the French, apparently because of something that happened 500 years ago, and this is why he blows up the Eifel Tower. Ok. Sure. Why not. But nobody likes the French. I mean, we've made it an American tradition (remember when we were calling them Freedom Fries?) So with the International Joes, Destro, the Villain, pardon me, the Scottish Villain may be the most American person in the movie. I'm not sure that's a good move on the movie's part. Movie, you might want to rethink that.

I'm already prepared for this to be bad, so let's just move on.

Green Lantern? Ryan Reynolds? Maybe?

Look, there's a Cartoon Green Lantern movie hanging out (That's the first 5 minutes of it) and it looks pretty good. Is there any hope that the movie will be that good? I don't know. I like Ryan Reynolds. I'm disappointed that this means probably no Deadpool movie. I love Deadpool. But it's Marvel and Green Lantern is DC and I'm sure neither side is gonna let him do both. But hey, Green Lantern is definitely more mainstream than Deadpool, so this is probably the right call on his part.

I just hope it's not a horrible CGI fest of bad green graphics, and seriously, I wish they'd skip the whole backstory, because do you really care? An alien gave him a ring, cool? Ok, can we get to the action??

Green Lantern, the greatest high concept in comics history: "A space policeman fights crime with the help of his magic wishing ring." Don't screw that up.

Anyway, here's pictures of nails.

Speaking of DC products, here's the packaging for the Wonder Twins.

And these are really awesome and funny reviews of Sky Mall Products.

This is better than the entire 23 hours of the Transformers movie.

And in honor of Michael Jackson's demise, here is the Eternal Moonwalk.

A Batman Essay (And some other stuff)

2009-06-30T08:37:00.001-07:00

Let's clear out the linkage first, and then I'll go on to the Batman stuff...

First, a quote from Brandon (my 13 year old son). "If all the karate masters only teach one student at a time, how come there's so many of them?"

I have no idea Brandon. On to some linkage:

There's a list of Band Name Origins here, that might be worth your time if you're into that kind of thing.

Don't know what this picture is, but it's freaking me out.

Rush's YYZ played on Kid's Toys. Remember the actual song sounds like this.

I wish I had that 5 minutes back. Funny video.

Compare and contrast various Alice in Wonderland characters with the new Tim Burton movie coming soon.

Really? Really?

Neon Maze is pretty cool. Though, you may want to ignore some of the *cough* more adult games on that page. Unless of course, you're, you know, an adult.

So. Batman. Yeah.

This is going to start with a list of the 6 craziest Batman 3 rumors, and then I'll just go off on a tangent and we'll all go on about our business, k? K.

This is Christopher Nolan. Chris has made some decent flicks.

This is David S. Goyer. Dave wrote the Batman scripts. He also directed a terrible movie and for a while he owed me 8 bucks for that. But then I saw Dark Knight and now I'm just gonna call us even. Cool? Cool.

Rumor after rumor has hit the inter-ma-nets about Batman 3, and they're all just pie-in-the-sky crazy, and here's why: Nolan doesn't have a script he likes. But that doesn't stop the inter-ma-nets from posting everything that sounds even vaguely like casting news. So here we go with the 6 craziest Batman rumors:

6.) Johnny Depp will play the Riddler and Philip Seymour Hoffman will play The Penguin. (Source)

Why people believe it: What's not to like? Depp is a great actor, big time movie star, and made Captain Jack Sparrow one of the most beloved maybe he's not all there characters in movie history. He's got a HUGE following. He's a consummate actor. He's fun. Why wouldn't we get this guy? Hoffman is critically acclaimed. Another great actor. He's sort of got that pudgy build you'd need for Penguin. He'd probably be great in the role. Again, what's not to like?

Why it's crazy: There's no script. No script means there's no need for a Riddler. Riddler might not be in the script. Why would you hire an actor to play a character that doesn't even show up in a non-existent script? Even better, Nolan apparently commented at one point that there were three characters who were verboten, who would never show up in a Batman movie directed by him. One of those characters is the Penguin. It's just too goofy. You can thank for that one. They sort of screwed that character up. Way to go guys.

Chances of either of these actually occurring: Depp as Riddler ~30% chance. Hoffman as Penguin ~5% chance.

5). Shia LaBeouf will play Robin. (Source)

Why people believe it: There's no doubt about The Beef, he is one of THE single biggest stars in Hollywood right now. How big? They wrote him a part as the Robin style side kick to Indiana Jones for the much anticipated 4th Indiana Jones movie and Indiana Jones DOESN'T have a sidekick! How wild is that? So, if they're willing to create unnecessary character sidekicks for him in movies where they don't need one then surely when an actual existing sidekick character role comes along he's the one you'd think of. I mean, for God's sake, in the Indy movie his name is Mutt. How dumb is that?

Why it won't happen: Remember earlier when I told you there were three characters Nolan would never put in his Batman movie? Thank God, Robin was one of them. See, he's already smarter than Joel Schumacher.

Chances of this occurring: 0%

4). Various people have been approached/signed to play Catwoman, including Cher, Rachel Weisz, Maggie Gyllenhaal, and Angelina Jolie. (Source, Another Source, a 3rd source, a 4th source)

Why People believe it: Catwoman is one of the big four (see below) so it's not unthinkable to think that she'd make an appearance in the franchise at some point. But seriously, Angelina Jolie? This doesn't seem like her kind of thing. She stopped making Lara Croft movies. Cher? I mean, really? Has anyone seen her recently? Isn't she like 900 years old? Rumor had it that Nolan wanted her specifically, but I seriously doubt this. Rachel Weisz? Maybe. Just maybe on that one. But Maggie Gyllenhaal? That requires Christopher Nolan's dark gritty Batman world to include zombies. Don't think that's gonna happen.

Chances of any of these happening: Jolie as Catwoman ~4%, Cher as Catwoman ~ -10%, Weisz as Catwoman ~15%, Gyllenhall as Catwoman ~0%

3). Eddie Murphy is playing the Riddler. (Source)

Why people believe it: I have no idea.

Why it won't happen: Seriously? Should I even bother with this? This one's just out there lunatic crazy, but it got a lot of play for a couple of days on the Interwebs for some reason. Murphy himself blew this off on The Tonight Show, saying he'd be better as the Egghead from the old 60's tv show, then he dropped an "Egg-squisite" an "Egg-cellent" and a "They'll never solve this hard boiled crime!" Which actually bumped him back up a couple of notches in my book because he's not crazy enough to believe it, and that was actually kind of funny. Seriously, the guy who came up with this rumor should be a Batman villain because he's clearly got crazy down.

Chances of this happening: Murphy as Riddler ~0%

2.) Robert Pattinson is going to replace Heath Ledger and play the Joker in the next Batman. (Source)

Why people believe it: Well, there's some slight touch of believability here because of the big name factor, like with Shia above as Robin. Pattinson is huge right now if you're a teenage girl (thanks to Twilight) and he is blonde, you know, just like Ledger was.

Why it's crazy: Here's what happened. An interviewer asked Pattinson if he'd like to do a superhero movie and he made some comment along the lines of "Hey that Batman made a lot of money, it'd be nice to be in one of those." And then another "journalist" took that story and ran with it, with a headline that read something along the lines of "Robert Pattinson Replacing Heath Ledger as the Joker" or some other such nonsense, despite the fact that 1.) He never said anything like that, and 2.) There's still no script, so do we need a joker? *shrug*

Chances this will actually happen: ~2% (you never know)

1.) There won't be a Batman 3 because Christopher Nolan isn't going to do it. (Source)

Why People Believe it: Nolan is clearly not 100% on board. He seems to have other things to do. He's not liking any of the scripts he's seeing right now. You know, it's just not that big a deal to him.

Why it won't happen: Hey, you know how much money Dark Knight made? Is there a number bigger than a ho-jillion? Do you honestly think there are execs at Warner Brothers going, "Oh, Nolan's not on board? Guess we just won't make another one." That's not going to happen. This already happened after the first movie, he did The Prestige before hitting Dark Knight. I think they'll give him one movie to get it out of his system (He's working on something called Inception right now) and then if he's still hemming and hawing we're gonna have a new director, Nolan be damned. Maybe it'll be McG (he did just do Terminator with Batman himself, Christian Bale), or Brett Ratner, or some other terrible director. Maybe they'll get somebody dark like David Fincher to do it. Or maybe they'll go out on a limb and grab somebody unexpected like McTiernan. But bet all your money on this, there's another movie coming whether Nolan finds a script he likes or not. Executives don't turn down money.

Chance of this not happening: Same as me winning the lottery.

Here's the thing about Batman, I'm a HUGE Batman fan. HUGE. You have to look at the possibilities. The Big Four Villains have been (since the 60's TV show) Joker, Riddler, Penguin, and Catwoman. This is why they always come up. Joker, you get Jack Nicholson and he does a great job. And then you get the Heath Ledger Joker and he just nails it, like hits it on the head like a 100 megaton nuke. That character's gold and by far the ultimate Batman Villain. He's Batman's archenemy. Batman's nemesis. He's like Holmes's Moriarty, or Bond's Blofeld. The other characters, well...

Penguin is a guy in a tux, a little tubby, with a monocle and a machine gun firing umbrella. I mean that's ok in a comic, but it's not gonna fly in the gritty dark realistic Batman world that's going on in these movies. He might work as a mob boss, but only barely.

Catwoman is just a burglar with a cat fetish. She's got the skin tight suit, but you could see her realistically showing up in the series somehow. The problem with her is, the thing between her and Batman is a romance thing. There's no violent fight, there's no obvious potential for a big action sequence. It's a lot of juxtaposition of these two creatures of the night, one out for justice, one doing her own thing. (I'd be remiss if I didn't bring up Jeff Freeman's comment about her, which was can you imagine how nice Gotham would be if she were a good guy like he is? Batman keeps that noise in check by himself, how much less crime would there be with two Batmans, only one is kicking your a** faster because she made plans for later.)

Riddler is rife with problems as he currently exists. Can you imagine the realistic world getting the guy with the green jumpsuit covered with purple question marks? Want to see how that plays in the real world just take a look at this guy. That's not gonna fly. Neither is the laughy, giddy, big gold cane wielding Riddler Jim Carrey and Joel Schumacker shoved at us. There's potential here if you make him super dark, like a serial killer who leaves riddles to screw with the Gotham PD, like the Zodiac killer. But then how much of a Riddler is he really? This one seems like the best potential, and surely Depp could pull this off, but it's still a longshot.

See, to me, Batman movies are like the anti-Transformers. I could go off on a whole Transformers 2 rant because I hated it so much, and I know other people like it and they say "it's just a popcorn movie, big robots fighting, explosions, Megan Fox, etc. how can you hate it?" And the answer is, I hate it because it had some nice source material and it just didn't deliver. This was how I used to feel about Batman movies. Remember, we got that one good one with Nicholson as the Clown Prince, and then we got that DeVito abomination of a Penguin (really, penguins with missiles strapped to their backs? Really?) and then we got the ridiculous Riddler/Two-Face movie (has there ever been a more obvious grab at getting two guys who were Big Box Office Draws at the same time? Carrey was just making his mark and Tommy Lee Jones fresh off the Fugitive? Those guys had no business with those roles). And then there was the life altering Batman and Robin, which really, someone should have gone to jail for.

My point is, people at the time made the same kinds of comments "It's just a popcorn flick. It's just a superhero movie. Why so much hate?" And it's because I see the potential of Batman, just like I see the potential of GI Joe and Transformers. And we're not getting the potential. We're getting the popcorn flick. I like the potential better. When Batman Begins first came out it was like somebody realized the potential, and not just abused the license. And the 500 Bazillion dollars Dark Knight made seems to back me up on this. We can do better. And we should. I'm glad we're doing better with Batman, and with Bond as well, come to that. I'm just not sure how it's going to end.

Oh, and the third character that Nolan would never use in a Batman movie? Batwoman.

Terminator vs. Predator vs. Alien vs. Vampires vs. Pringles vs. the Three Stooges....

2009-06-26T11:07:00.001-07:00

Daybreakers. Coolio looking vampire movie.

Best Pringles Ad ever.

Update on that Three Stooges movie I was talking about the other day: Sean Penn appears to be out as Larry, and now there may be Paul Giamiti-ness taking his place. Just FYI.

For the love of God, please stop teaching MACHINES TO EAT FLESH! You're just making it easy for Skynet later.

I know I went on a rant about Terminator the other day, but seriously, here's some problems I have:

1. If Sarah Conner had had an unlisted phone number the Terminator would have never found her.
2. Why is it that Skynet builds a time machine that can't send non-living material through time, then immediately proceeds to send an 800 pound robot covered in "living tissue".
3. Why didn't the humans just wrap a bunch of weapons in "living tissue" in order to send them back with Kyle Reese?
3b. Why didn't Skynet think of this? T-800 had to go to a gunshop for cryin out loud!
4. It's not like Skynet has to wait the 2 days T-800 runs around L.A. trying to kill Sarah Conner to find out what happened, there should be a light somewhere at Skynet HQ that says "Status of Sarah Conner in 1984" with a light on it. That light either immediately turns red right after the terminator is sent back in time, or it failed. If it failed, why not immediately send another terminator? It actually waits like 15 years before sending another. Why?

I can't even go on. It's just too silly. This is all because I watched the first Terminator the other day and it's so good, and so much fun, and then everything after that is just ridiculous. It makes me sad. It's like Alien Vs. Predator. The first Predator is an A+ action movie. Predator 2 is actually a B- action movie. Alien is an A Horror movie. Aliens is an A+ action movie. How do you combine those two things to make a D- first movie and an F+ second movie? I don't get it.

Afoot. That's what weird things are.

2009-06-23T13:43:00.000-07:00

Last Airbender teaser. Meh. I don't like that kid they got for Aang. Maybe he'll surprise me, but he doesn't look right.

New Moon teaser. Double meh. Oh, look, that dude's a werewolf. What a surprise. Hey, the acting in the trailer is...oh, I'm not even gonna lie. It still looks terrible.

Ponyo! Finally. A kids movie I want to see. I'll probably have to go see it without the kids. I'm sure it'll look too much like a "kids" movie for them to want to go see it. But Miyazaki is brilliant. Kayla will go with me.

We talkin' bout Practice. Nice.

Here's 25 words you don't know.

More clever logos.

William Shatner on Conan O'Brien. It's all terrific, but make sure you get to the part where Shatner has to do the Vulcan salute. Totally awesome.

Weird things are afoot. They usually are with David Fincher involved. The man's a bit of a loon. But he directed not one, but actually two of my favorite movies. And then there's Aaron Sorkin. Also, with some problems. But one of my favorite writers. Really good stuff. Really good. And movies as well. He seems to work best with an ensemble cast. And what could be more of an ensemble than the Facebook movie? Oh yeah, that's right. A facebook movie. Told you it was weird.

New Look (Again)

2009-06-23T11:51:00.001-07:00

I thought since the Lakers won the title I'd go ahead and give myself a new color scheme to reflect how awesome that is, so i threw some purple and yellow in here, and well, you know. Except for that big green title thingy (cause I'm the toad, right? No. It's because it won't let me change it for some reason.)

Anyway, there's some random trash I wanted to post coming up, and then, you know, i'll just bail from here and go back to whatever it is i should be doing instead of this.

Very cool video for AION, a Korean game coming out from an old company I used to work for.

Creepy pics of Johnny Depp, Anne Hathaway, and Helena Bonham Carter from Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland.

Yay Zombies!

Lakers 99, Magic 91 in OT

2009-06-12T07:49:00.001-07:00

A nice 3-1 series lead lets me breathe a little easier. Make no mistake, it's possible that Orlando could win 3 in a row, 2 of them in LA, but it's not likely. So happy times are here for me. Fish stuck a couple of 3 point daggers into the Magic just to make sure the corpse didn't get up like Jason at the end of a Friday the 13th movie. In particular I want to note a couple of things. Apparently Alonzo Mourning made a comment about Kobe being more of a coach than Phil Jackson, which is patently ridiculous. The man has 9 NBA titles. Tied with Red Auerbach for most ever, and he's about to become the only coach in history with 10.

But what really sets that up is the last play in regulation, where down 3 points the Lake show opted to bring the ball down full court instead of from the midcourt line. At the time the commentators were out of their minds with "What are they doing?" style comments. But here's the genius of Phil Jackson. It looks for all the world like he drew that play up with precision accuracy, because a couple of nifty down court passes left Fish almost all alone to take that 3 pointer. This is the genius of Phil Jackson. He not only lulled the Magic into double teaming Kobe at the far end of the floor (because of course they expected him to take that last shot), but it kept so many Magic defenders all over the court trying to defend that Fisher had very little defense to contend with to hit the shot. Both tactics, not having Kobe take the shot, and spreading the floor by taking the ball out full court instead of midcourt, worked to perfection. That's why Phil is about to have a ring on both thumbs.

Now this guy knows how to light a cigarette and look cool doing it.

You want bizarre? Ok, how's this for bizarre. The Farrelly Brothers (Dumb and Dumber, There's Something About Mary, and Me, Myself & Irene) are making a 3 Stooges movie. Couple of things; first, there have been a few 3 Stooges movies in the past few years, biopics, you know, the story of the 3 stooges and how they got together and the Shemp and Curly Joe and whatnot. But apparently this is not what's happening.
The Farrely brothers are shooting a movie that's just a 3 Stooges movie. Like a movie the 3 Stooges used to make in the 30's. That's a neat premise, and I'm sort of interested. But what really just makes the whole thing take a left turn is the cast.
How bout this for your Moe Howard? Che Guevara is Moe? That's weird right? Well, how bout this for your Larry Fine? Oh, that's right. Larry Fine requires powerful acting! And don't forget the last guy. Who's gonna shave their head to be Curly? You. Have. Got. To. Be. Kidding. I'm not crazy, right? That's just ridiculous.

New Look (Again)

2009-06-10T15:05:00.000-07:00

Lakers 104, Magic 108

2009-06-08T07:05:00.000-07:00

Lakers lose game 3. Oh well. That was the game that I was willing to just let go anyway. I figured the Magic had one in em. In particular I'm impressed that the Lakers actually managed to play all the way through to the end. They've had a bad tendency to win the first 2 games of a series and then just take game 3 off and lose by 30. At least this time they played it through to the end.

Though, now I'm wondering if they were all in the locker room after going "We lost anyway! We could have taken the game off!"

Anyhoo. 43 inch curved monitor you say? Yeah, I'd like one of those, please, ok, thanks. Don't let the $8000 dollar price tag deter you. Though some people who actually saw these in action say there are giant lines on the screen like they just glued 4 monitors together. So there is that.

This movie looks totally cool. And I can imagine this being the future of the world.

I really should invest in some nerdier bookshelves. Or, failing that, maybe I should just build myself a rocket launcher. (Thanks to Kai for the link.)

Now THIS is how you simulate a rain storm. Oh, and then they do Africa by Toto. Sweet.

I never heard of Jimmy Car before, but after seeing this bit, where he deals with a heckler in his crowd, I may have to go find some more of his work.

If you gave Japan an unlimited amount of money and technology what do you think their army would look like? Yeah, I think they'd just do this.

Lakers 100, Magic 75.

2009-05-31T18:42:00.000-07:00

Lakers win by 25. Anthony said, "The first quarter was interesting, but then it got boring." But as Eli and I and any other Laker fan can tell you, the first quarter sucked and then it got good. Three more games of that please and then Allison can spend the summer in peace. On to some linksies.

Nerdiest. Tattoos. Ever.

Toy Story 3. It's never going to end is it?

Travis needs this for our game night.

Listen, here's my argument. I know GI Joe is dumb. It's always been dumb. They have dumb names, they appear to be part of no known military organization, they wear stupid outfits, for God's sake one guy has a parrot. But there's a level of dumb that they've sort of hit and stayed at. And now there's a movie, and beyond all reasonable comprehension whoever wrote and put this movie together grabbed a shovel, broke some ground and said, "I believe I can make this dumber." Well played sir, you've found a way to drill through the bottom of the barrel.

The world's most pointless machine.

Holy. Moly. Best visual illusion of the year winner. Freaky and awesome all wrapped up together. It's Freawesome.

Wish I'd found this on Mother's Day. What happens when siblings try to do something together for mom.

How to keep your cat off the counter.

Lots of videos, for some reason.

2009-05-22T11:41:00.001-07:00

Human Target. Awesome. I'll totally watch that. (Assuming I remember it's coming on.)

Remember V? It's back.

Yip-Yip. This used to be one of my favorite things on Sesame Street. And this is cool too. Also, the muppets may have actually been the birth of rap music. And because it's funny, the three worst possible muppets to sing Danny Boy sing...well, Danny Boy.

Imagine you have limitless money. Ok, now, where would you travel to? Close your eyes and think about it...did you pick this place? Cause according to this article, that's what the majority of people surveyed picked.

This guy knows how to flip.

I have no idea what the point of this is, but I ran around it for 10 minutes.

Greed is good. But it'll get you killed in this game.

Fascinating look into people's lives based on what's in their refrigerator.

I like Minus. It's just a silly little comic.

Aerial Virtual Tours of New York.

I'm posting, I don't care if you're reading or not anymore.

2009-05-20T11:17:00.000-07:00

I feel it is my designated duty to bring you cool looking game trailers, so in that vein "Project Trico". Which surely someone will later point out to me isn't a game or something, but I don't know, it looks cool.

Oh, it's also my designated duty to bring you movies about video games that look ridiculous. Case in point. Come on Gerard, you were great in 300. Make something decent!

What do the robots want in Terminator? Just to kill all humans? Then what? All they do is build better robots for killing humans. What happens if they kill all the humans? They make better robots to not kill humans? They start on some other species? I think we should make a terminator movie where it's 100 years in the future and all the humans are dead and now Skynet just hunts and kills sharks. I'd watch that.

Even though Lorenzo Llamas is in this movie, I'm still gonna watch it. I'll probably own it on DVD at some point.

The first two pictures from the Avatar: The Last Airbender movie are out here. I assume that's supposed to be Zuko and Ang, who look like this. So, that's not bad, right? Considering it's directed by M. Night Shamalamadingdong and his last movie was about trees that hated people I call this one a win.

Sherlock Holmes. Yes. A good one. Possibly. It's been too long.

2009-05-05T11:49:00.000-07:00

Best world design tools ever. And this video made me tear up a little.

Music in the movies can be very important. Here's some examples of how using the wrong music can totally ruin the mood. The Close Encounters one got me.

The Muppets own the internet. That is all. (Slightly NSFW lyrics).

I always need new sunglasses. I would like these.

Maybe you shouldn't buy that.

Procedurally generated cityscapes. Very cool even if you don't know what that means.

Sherlock Holmes. That is all.

Clearly Hollywood is not reading my blog...

2009-04-29T14:11:00.001-07:00

Because if they were, they would have noted my lambasting of remaking movies that weren't that good to begin with. However, what Hollywood is doing now is remaking this movie. You may have heard of it, some of us have even seen it, but there's no one anywhere clamoring for a remake. Trust me on this. Full article here.

On the other hand, someone just optioned this property. Which sounds cool. A detective who makes people forget they ever met him? That's kind of interesting.

Some artwork on this page might be not safe for work but this might be, and I don't want to exaggerate this claim, but this might be the GREATEST IDEA FOR A BOOK, EVER.

If they have fixed my complaints with the first one, this might be the greatest video game of all time. (I know, I'm prone to hyperbole).

This dude is the GREATEST BIKER OF- ah, forget it. I'm just gonna let this dude's video do what it does. Which is mostly make me cringe every time he's flying ten feet in the air on a bike cause I'm thinking about how badly I'd sprain my ankle ever time he does a trick.

Brilliant Logos. Some of these are downright freaky in their genius.

I have no idea what's going on here. This guy apparently won a contest or something, and now he's trying to make a CG Batman movie set 10 years after Dark Knight...it's not bad for creepiness, but, you know, the lack of movement sort of makes me worry, cause making CG characters move around and look good while they do it is not easy.

I find this, to be perfectly blunt, to be suspiciously similar to this. Except if Wesley Snipes was a Japanese school girl. Which come to think of it should make it the greatest movie ever...

Clearly this is new content.

2009-04-20T08:38:00.000-07:00

I'm glad that the Order of the Stick is back together.

I'm not glad that I watched this movie. It's bad. It's beyond bad. It's filled with bad acting. It's a bad story. It's based on a true story. And it's still bad. I want to like Eliza Dushku, (She was the daughter from True Lies, and one of the main characters in Bring It On, which is a wholly underrated movie, btw) plus she's in a lot of Joss Whedan stuff, and I like Joss Whedan stuff (if you still haven't seen Firefly, or at least the 11 episodes that were made, then I don't know what to tell you, you're missing some of the best television ever made.

But with every movie she's in lately it's like a cry for help. She's sending me some kind of signal to let me know that not only does she not want me to like her, but that she doesn't want anyone to like her. Ever. For any reason. This movie is a testament to that. If my wife and I are laughing at your ludicrous movie and, literally, hoping that something bad happens to the people in it, then something's wrong. There's a scene near the end where Eliza is standing somewhere trying to look crazy (which she's bad at, which hurts this movie tremendously since it's the story of her character descending into madness, except she always looks like she's descending into the discomfort of constipation) and she's got a pistol in her hand, and I casually asked, "Is she going to shoot herself?" And Allie said, "God, I hope so." That pretty much summed up the movie for me.

You all know that the Snuggie is just a robe turned backwards right? Ok, just wanted to make sure we're all clear on that.

Seriously, because people will try to sell you anything.

Especially if they make a commercial and make it sound exciting.

I mean, they might try to sell you like, jump ropes, without the rope. I'm serious. Stop buying this stuff. Seriously.

I love 70's and 80's era television. I love Star Wars. I love these:

Dallas. Airwolf. MacGuyver.

Star Trek Dallas. Star Trek A-Team.

Star Trek Loveboat? Ok, now they're just getting silly.

Trailer #3 for Harry Potter and the (Adjective) (Noun) (I don't know. I stopped reading the books right around the time they became big enough to hollow out and plant ferns in) is long and makes the movie look epic (read: long). Please note that the green warning screen at the front of that trailer is there to warn you that this movie contains mild sensuality. Well. There you are. I'm not creeped out by that at all.

If you're not terrified by this then I don't know what to tell you. Someone spent a lot of time on this, and that person apparently has access to a lot of old technological gizmos and has the capacity to use them to do whatever he wants. I know I'm scared.

So the people who used to make Batman apparently shot a pilot for a Wonder Woman show. You have to believe me when I tell you that this is ludicrous beyond any description I could give it. Eat your roughage.

For realz. It's an update.

2009-04-15T13:29:00.000-07:00

My goal now is just to ramble. I was talking to some people today at Plucker's, and by the way, I do so love chicken that I use a Plucker's card, and you should get one, cause really, I can't even imagine how much money it's saving me, and...where was I?

Oh, yeah, I was at Plucker's talking about Bill Simmons columns on ESPN page 2, and I was telling them that they used to be really good, and then they sort of fell off for a while, and somebody pointed out that the Mailbags were still pretty good, and it reminded me that my favorite thing that Simmons used to do was the Ramblings.

So, about once a week or so if I can manage it I'm just going to attempt to do some rambling.

Like, here's one, apparently Disney's only ever made one movie, and they've been tracing it ever since. Thanks to Mangoat.com for the link to that.

Maybe that's what happened...I posted that link that time telling everyone where I was getting all my links and now no one cares what I write because you're all just out there reading all those other web pages.

I like Mike Judge, who brought us Beavis & Butthead, Office Space, and Idiocracy. I like Jason Bateman. I even like Ben Affleck (his best role is still in this movie). So, I'll probably enjoy this movie. (I especially like Mila Kunis, but that's because she's supercute and used to play World of Warcraft regularly.)

I'm now cautiously optimistic about the new Star Trek movie. I think Karl Urban was an inspired choice for McCoy now that I've seen this clip. You should watch all the clips, but Urban does that voice thing that DeForest Kelley used to be so good at, where he sounds growly and his voice is elongated on some words...it's really like watching a young Bones go to work. I can't wait to hear him say, "He's dead Jim."

(By the way, thinking about DeForest Kelley always reminds me of this movie.)

The following properties are in active development as remakes: Arthur, Romancing the Stone, Back to School (!), Meatballs, Footloose, Near Dark, Logan's Run, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show. I'd link all those to IMDB but it's time consuming. Look em up if you don't know what they are.
Some of these I can see...Footloose? They'll just get a bunch of 90210 teens and redo this movie, only with modern music and an increasingly unbelievable storyline (in the early 80's you could imagine a little town where dancing was outlawed. These days? Really?). Meatballs will either flop horribly without a Bill Murray to drive it, or they'll turn it into the next American Pie by filling it with gratuitous nudity. Logan's Run? Sure, update classic sci-fi with better special effects, I have no problem with that. But Back to School? That was a Rodney Dangerfield vehicle. That is to say, that movie was just a showcase for Rodney to be Rodney. Why would you remake that? And who would you put in it? Do we have anybody who could fill that role? Is there an aging comedian out there that could pull this off? Remember they replaced Rodney with Jackie Mason in the second Caddyshack and it flopped horribly. (Yes, I'm sorry, a second Caddyshack movie does exist. I know. It hurts me too.) And Rocky Horror? Really? REALLY???

Which brings me to a rant I've been wanting to do for some time, which is really about I Am Legend, which is a remake of a remake of a movie based on a novel. I've been reading a lot of Richard Matheson recently (He wrote Hell House, The Incredible Shrinking Man, and a host of other things, including the novel the Kevin Bacon movie, Stir of Echoes is based on, and the episode of Twilight Zone with the monster on the wing of the plane and Captain Kirk freaking out (see, I brought it back around to Star Trek).

He also wrote I Am Legend. I'm going to totally ruin the plot here, but the book's been around for more than 50 years and for God's sake there's 3 movies, so if you don't know what's up with this story you only have yourself to blame. In the book, the main character is the only human left, and he's been hunting the vampires and killing them, and through a series of wacky misunderstandings the vampires capture and kill him. In the book he dies peacefully, realizing that he's become the legend of the vampire to the vampires, in essence, he's the guy that comes while they're sleeping and kills them in their sleep, which is what human vampire myths are about, so he's their myth of a vampire, the creepy monster that shows up and...you get the idea.

So he's realizing that he's the legend, and thus the title of the book. With the exception of the Vincent Price movie from 1964 (appropriately enough entitled: "The Last Man on Earth") where they kind of got the idea right, but then had Price go out in a blaze of glory instead of dying peacefully, the movies have all failed to see the poignancy in this cool little story, and instead they make action movies with Will Smith and Charlton Heston.

By the way, the vampires in the 1972 movie, appropriatley titled: "The Omega Man", are all convinced they became vampires because of our overuse of technology. So they're Luddites. Can you imagine how things went for them when the spokesman for the NRA showed up screaming at them with his inhuman beard and a trunk full of guns? Yeah, it goes exactly like that.

By the way, they're remaking Conan and seriously, they have a poster and a webpage, but no script, no director, and no actors signed. Well, they're trying to convince the Governator to do a cameo, but seriously, no script? I'm afeared.

As an aside I would totally watch a Conan movie starring The Rock. Didn't Arnie pass the torch to Dwayne in The Rundown? How is he not playing Conan. I would watch that movie in a heartbeat. In fact, bring me The Rock and Vin Diesel and let's make an awesome movie and be done with it. I don't care if they're buddies (Conan and his bestest buddy) killing countrysides full of cultists, or make Vin the bad guy and they have an epic sword fight at the end. I demand this movie get made. But instead we're probably going to get a bunch of unknowns. Or worse, they'll get Zach Efron to play the young Conan and I'll try not to gouge my own eyes out with a cheese grater.

I'm a little freaked out that we have a pirate problem going on in the world. I mean seriously, it's like the 1700's are back with a vengeance.

Well, this was inevitable. The Celtics and the Bulls are still playing, and the Pistons Cavs game has already started. What the heck? C'mon NBA, there's only 4 games today! Can we not let one end before we start another one? Chicago and Boston went to overtime, but the Cavs game started while this game was in the 4th quarter. It's not like they couldn't have waited, there's nothing else going on! It's the PLAYOFFS! I'd like to see all the games. That's all I'm saying.

I'm so glad we have crazy named people back in Austin politics. I long for the days of Brewster McCracken and Jack Stick. Lately we've had people with regular names. But aren't those great names? Brewster McCracken? Jack Stick? Wouldn't they be great characters? Brewster McCracken could be a Bond villain. Jack Stick is the guy that braved the Jungles of South America to find the missing Aztec idol of storms.

Here's an excerpt from the local paper:

That lineup could be the most competitive since the 1994 race, in which Bruce Todd beat Daryl Slusher by about 1,300 votes, former Austin political consultant Mike Blizzard said.

The poltical consultant is MIKE BLIZZARD!!! How awesome is that?

Anyway, I've been lamenting the lack of cool names until I saw the other day that somebody running for something (I don't even really care what) is named Gunnar Ristrophe. That's an awesome name. Go Gunnar.

Oh, and if you didn't know, the mayor of Austin? Will Wynn.

Yeah.

Must be the weather.

2009-02-06T13:24:00.001-08:00

Of all the things I'm sticking on the page today, this is the one I want you to watch the most. And yes, I mean you. Whoever you are. This is a visual representation of the Credit Crisis explained. It's about 10 minutes long, but it's totally worth it if you want to have any idea of what's happening with the housing market.
This is such a great video of Almost Accidents that I couldn't NOT share it. Amazing stuff in there. Some very lucky people are still alive.
If you let someone in another country make a movie about basketball, you might get this...Fireball. I'm pretty sure they missed the point, but they added Kung-Fu, which is kind of awesome.
I just thought these were funny Hockey Goal Highlights.
Foxes on a Trampoline are pretty cute.
Here's what News Anchors do during commercial breaks. That must have taken a lot of practice.
I always find these fascinating. 3D Sidewalk Art. Watch how it gets made.
OMG, the crazy. The Santa Cruz Public Council puts up videos of their monthly meetings. This is a must see just for the insanity.
Someone buy me this. K, thanks.

Enthusiastic Phone Answerer Guy.

2009-01-30T11:24:00.000-08:00

I'm so going to have to type up that story about the unlisted phone number, but today I actually have a story that's probably only funny to me, but it was just how totally EXCITED the guy I called to talk to about my ticket was.

So, I got a ticket for having my registration out of date on my car (for those of you who don't live in Texas, you have to register your car every year, just so the state can get 50$ a year for every car driving around, which they ostensibly should be using to fix potholes, but apparently they're spending it on coffee, because the conversation I had with the police department phone operator seems to indicate that that is the case.) This was the conversation I had. Note that every time I type in ALL CAPS it's because the guy I was talking to sounded very happy and excited and enthusiastic.

The Guy: Thanks for calling, what can I do for you?
Me: Well, I got a ticket for my registration being out of date...
The Guy: Did you get the car registered?
Me: Yeah, I did that on Monday.
The Guy: OH THAT IS FANTASTIC! That is just GREAT!
Me: Yeah, uh...so what should I do now?
The Guy: Do you live in Austin?
Me: No, Round Rock.
The Guy: OH THAT IS JUST A BEAUTIFUL NEIGHBORHOOD! SO NICE!
Me: Yeah, uh...so...
The Guy: Just take the ticket and the receipt to the station on Lamplight, you know where that is?
Me: Yeah.
The Guy: It'll be a 20 dollar fee. Anything else?
Me: Um. No.
The Guy: HAVE A GREAT DAY!

It was just so bizarre. The dude was way too happy. I'm very glad though that he was polite an informative, and told me everything I needed to know. So, Dude, if you ever read this and realize it was you, thank you. You were awesome. Every government agency should hire this guy to answer their phones. And he should get a raise.

When I tell the story of the unlisted phone number you'll know why I wish this guy had been working for the phone company at the time.

Incidentally, the ticket getting incident in the first place occurred on a dark street at night, and curious as to how the guy even saw that my registration was out I asked. Turns out cops have computers in their car and they just type in the license numbers of every driver that goes past them. It tells them if the driver of said car has any warrants for their arrest, or outstanding tickets, but apparently also tells them whether your registration is out. So if you're trying to be clever and cover up your registration sticker somehow or just have no sticker in your car so they don't see the wrong color or an out of date one, then well, that's not going to work for you. The computer knows.

Why the computer didn't just send me a reminder that I hadn't done mine is beyond me, but during my trip to the courthouse to get my updated tag I did discover that the courthouse has my old address in Pflugerville listed, so that would probably explain that one. The poor lady who bought my old house is probably sick to death of getting reminders to get my registration renewed.

Ok, I can't just leave it at that, I have to give you some links of some kind.

Andrew the Droid is a bit of a jerk, but he needs your help. Go help him.

The Original Star Wars Trilogy Explained...by someone who hasn't seen it.

This may be my favorite new blog. Superuseless Superpowers. I like 13th Bullet Bulletproof guy.

Well, I still like this blog too. Because I like to write, so a whole blog dedicated to which ink pens write the best is intriguing to me.

Fascinating. Everything you ever wanted to know about DNA in an effective, pretty understandable video with nice images.

So, yeah. That's what's going on around here.

Who's Birthday was today?

2009-01-28T19:58:00.000-08:00

Oh yeah. Mine!

Sweet. We have very little today. Let's see what we have...

We have, an awesome giant picture (zoomable) taken during Obama's inauguration.

We have, a remake of the classic ragdoll game.

See, the problem is, if I update too much, i don't have that much stuff to link. I'm going to have to start telling stories or something.

Anybody wanna hear some stories?

Games? I don't have any stinking games.

2009-01-21T20:11:00.000-08:00

I know it's supposed to be game day, but I think it's going to be random movie day instead because I just haven't found that many web games out there this week. At least not any that I care enough about to share.

Though I was playing Fusion Fall. That's the free Cartoon Network MMO. Runs through the browser sort of like Toon Town (there's a download or something, I wasn't paying a whole lot of attention). But I kind of already got bored with it and went back to Wow.

Well, on to some Videos.

Totally fascinated by the Little Drummer Girl playing Rush's YYZ. Neil Peart would be proud.

There's a webpage of US Government Terror Warnings. Pinning the arrow to the wall was my favorite.

Extreme Tabletop gaming. These guys have way too much free time.

This is a good Skittles commercial called Reflect the Rainbow.

I love things like this. It's a screen play written about How to Format a Screenplay. How meta.

Let's finish with Sliding Box Cat. Cause he's cute.

Linkety-pop!

2009-01-19T20:28:00.000-08:00

Some of you know this and some of you don't, but I had a hard drive malfunction last week, a pretty serious one, and I had to take the computer in to the Apple store for a few days to have it "resolved". Those little ""s there should tell you all you need to know, but in the interest of full disclosure, "resolved" means my hard drive died a horrible death and nothing could be saved from it. So all my old writing, all my pictures and music, all my videos that I'd ripped (legally, off DVD's I own, mind you) are all gone, gone, gone.

I was a sad clown for a little while, but now I'm back in business, I've decided to write the whole thing off as a learning experience and I'm back to writing full bore with a blank slate and none of those pesky "Stories that I started and didn't finish, and now I don't know what to do with them"'s hanging over my head.

But it's Monday, and as promised Monday is link day. I'm going to go behind the curtain and show you where a lot of the links you see here magically appear from. This is kind of like Houdini explaining to the audience exactly where he hides the key before they drop him in the tank of water covered in chains, so you now have the power to stop reading my blog by just checking all the sites I check on the regular and reading all those for yourself.

Some of you won't do that, because sometimes I tell funny stories about snakes, and others are too busy to read all the things that happen on all those blogs, and sometimes, you just don't care that much anyway. So, keep coming back to see what I thought was cool, but here's where about 80% of the links on my blog come from.

Actually, I'm not going to give you ALL my secret sites. Just the ones I think are cool, and don't have naked people in them (usually).

Topless Robot - I'm not sure what a topless robot is, but rest assured, there aren't naked pictures of circuit boards or anything on here. This is just a geek compilation blog, lots of stuff about nerdy movies, video games, tv shows, and toys.

I09 - You may have heard of Gawker, which owns a lot of blogs that have to do with celebrities and whatnot. They also run Deadspin (another great site) that's all about sports. (You'll note that almost all their sites have the same layout.) I09 is their sci-fi/fantasy blog. Lots of stuff here about science, science fiction, sci-fi movies, and sci-fi entertainment in general (books, tv, comics, etc.). They update a lot more than Topless Robot, but they also tend to be broader about categories.

Robot Viking - Lots of robots, huh? Robot Viking is mostly about tabletop games, collectible card games, board games, etc. There's lots of D&D stuff there, which is usually about all I care about.

Chris's Invincible Super Blog - This one's just about comic books. Most of you probably don't care, but I find the guy to be very funny. Though sometimes not safe for work.

In4mador - This is just random stuff, but a lot of games, sometimes some cool videos, sometimes just cool websites. It doesn't update nearly as often as it should, but it's almost always high quality.

Metafilter - This is a high traffic site, probably 20 or so posts a day, but a lot of very interesting stuff shows up here. Unlike the sites above that are mostly run by a single person or group of people, anybody who signs up can post to Metafilter (it's kind of like Fark, but a little more grown up).

Icanhascheezburger - Funny cats. Nuff said.

Stay tuned for Wednesday, and if the computer doesn't die between now and then (fingers crossed) I'll see if I can find you some games.

Ciao.

Wednesday is Game day.

2009-01-07T11:23:00.000-08:00

It's another day another three links. I'm going to have to start saving more links for things at some point I guess, but I'm trying to stick to my M-W-F schedule right now, and since Monday was cool Links day, Wednesday will be Game Day. So, here's three games I found. Well, two games and just a toy I guess. Turntables is the kind of thing I might have done on Monday, but for now it's gamey enough to play with.

Want to be like a real viking, and do what real vikings did? Ice Breaker. Cause what real vikings did was chop their friends out of frozen ice blocks. It's true. I saw it on the Discovery Channel.

Is it a game? Turntables. Pretend to be a DJ. Pretend it's a game too.

Now you all know how much I love zombies. Left 4(k) Dead. Serious zombie action there. I'm still not sure how long this game goes on if you just keep playing it. Probably forever.

Bloggerific.

2009-01-05T19:13:00.001-08:00

It's a new year. Whoop-de-doo. It's been like 2 weeks since I updated this thing, and I had these grandiose plans for doing like an update monday, wednesday, and friday, and I was going to make it my new year's resolution, but seriously, who am I kidding?

The only resolution I've made (and kept so far) is to write everyday. Got to keep that up. Got to keep that up. I can't cheat and pretend that on random days when I update my blog that that counts as writing.

Wait, what's today? It's Monday! Hold on, it's the first monday of the new year, right? Ok. New resolution: Updating on Monday, Wednesday and Fridays!

See how I lulled you into that false sense of doom and then right there in that last paragraph I pulled it out and was like, "Bam! Doing stuff."

Monday is now officially a blog day. We're going to call monday "Link Day" and that's the day I'm going to link to cool and exciting things.

First of all, for those of you who don't know, Anthony has moved his blog. He is no longer at Sunsword dot com, he's found an even better way to stroke his own ego and got a blog with his own name on it. I updated it over there on the right. Or if you're too lazy to move the mouse like six inches you can click here: www.anthonycastoro.com

Second of all, for those of you who don't know, Anthony's mom (Laura Castoro) writes romance novels under the name Laura Parker. She has a blog too, and so I put a link to that over there under Anthony. Maybe I should put hers over Anthony? That would seem apropos, but I think I'll leave it like it is for now. You can find her blog at www.lauracastoro.com

Stop by and say hi so she gets all excited and updates her page all the time. You know, the opposite of how you people normally treat me. :p

Thirdly, Allison started her own blog at toadsallie.blogspot.com Hm...I should put a link over there for that too...Ok, there. Done. She gets to sit at the top.

Is that enough blogging for you?

Blog blog blog.

28.6 lbs. in 30 days

2008-12-19T08:28:00.000-08:00

If you'd like to lose that much weight, just like I did....well, good luck. Cause that was 3 replacement shake meals (breakfast, lunch, and snack) a day plus a 600 calorie dinner for a whopping total of 1200 calories a day. For a month.

And I didn't kill a single person. I thought about it. But I didn't. I also didn't go crazy and eat 4 large pepperoni pizzas while humming old Fat Boys songs in my head, but I thought about that too.

Anyway, that craziness is done, and I'm down almost 30 pounds, and now I'm moving on to phase 2 of my diet which is 3100 calories (imminently more doable) and no more replacement shakes (thank you, God). The chocolate ones are ok, the Strawberries & Cream are edible, but the vanilla ones taste like chalk mixed with more chalk, and the Butter Pecan ones are good until you've had more that two of them and then they just start to taste like despair.

Anyway, diet is going good, I'm eating like a normal person for the first time since I was like 12, and I'm maintaining. That's my good news for the, well, year I guess, since it's almost 2009. (BTW, it's never too early to start thinking about getting me birthday presents. I'll be 37 on the 28th of January. 37 is a prime number. Prime rib. I'm off on a tangent.)

Anyhoo, here's some cool stuff to look at:

Chicken Head Tracking. I found this bizarre, but kind of cool to watch.

Totally fake movie of Bruce Lee playing ping pong with nun-chuks, which is still kind of awesome.

Pictures from the 1930's and 1940's in color. These are neat. I thought they would be boring when I started looking at them, and then I found I couldn't stop. These apparently arne't colorized, they're taken with some kind of color overlay used in the 30's and 40's.

Some guy build a robot out of legos to solve rubik's cubes. I'm faster than the robot, but I still like watching it. And yes, I know other people have done this before, I just think legos and rubik's cubes are cool. So there. My page, my rules.

Well, if you're going to be like that I'll end this post right now!

Movie day.

2008-12-12T08:52:00.000-08:00

It's been a bizarre week. I lost my iPhone and had to buy a new one. Which meant I had to convince Allison to get a new one too to ease my guilt over having lost the stupid thing in the first place. So, two new 3-G iPhones later and...well...it's not as exciting as the first time I got an iPhone, but it's still...um...something. It's good. It's all good.

Anyway, it's all movies today, so have at it. (note that there is no movie attached to the black list of scripts, but they're all movie scripts so it still counts).

Dogs Love Snow.

The terrifying French world of the Sims 3.

Carol of the Christmas Pickle. Christmas and pickles. Yum.

The Black List of Scripts. Script ideas voted by Hollywood executives as being worth looking into, but no one's doing them yet. Interesting stuff.

Dragonball movie trailer. Oh dear, I don't even watch this show and I know this looks terrible. And nothing like the show it's based on. Dear kids, I'm sorry Hollywood sucks. Here's some random college singing group doing the Pokemon theme to make up for it.

You, know...magpie stuff.

2008-12-08T22:20:00.001-08:00

Man, I have to start updating more often. Somebody send me an email every week and brow beat me into updating my page. Or something. I'm a serious slacker. It's been like 2 or 3 weeks now. I'm not even sure. I'm too lazy to even check.

Magpies. So, I'm reading some internets and I come across this. Apparently Oxford and Cambridge, two utterly prestigious schools, ask some really bizarre questions on their applications.

For example: What would you do if you were a magpie? (thus my title up there).

Here are some more:

Would you rather be a novel or a poem? (Novel. I don't think I rhyme with anything.)

How would you poison someone without the police finding out? (I think this one is one they just send all the answers to the cops so they can start checking for this stuff).

Why don't they let the managers of Ikea run the country instead of politicians? (Seriously, that's one of the questions. How bout, "Cause we don't want the country to fall apart if someone bumps into it.")

What does it mean to be happy? (I think you'll have to ask a magpie.)

How would you market a rock band? (I think putting their albums in poetry books would probably work good, don't you think?)

If it could take form, what shape would the novel "To the Lighthouse" become? (Duh. Lighthouse.)

Can a thermostat think? (Can a writer for a college application?)

How do you organize a successful revolution? (Guns.)

Is it morally wrong to attempt to climb a mountain? (Depends on what the mountain thinks, I guess. Kilimanjaro, no. Everest, yes.)

If I were a grapefruit would I rather be seedless, or non-seedless? (There's a vasectomy joke in there somewhere, I just can't find it.)

Do you think you're clever? (No. I think I'm a magpie.)

Would you say greed is good or bad? (I think it's good. No, bad. No, wait. What do magpies think?)

I'm stuck on the magpie thing. I couldn't tell you why.

Again, someone remind me to update this thing more often and I will. Next time I'm going to put a picture up of the Santa and the reindeers my parents brought me from West Virginia. I'd do it now, but I haven't gotten the picture off my phone yet, and yes, I'm too lazy to do it right now. Sue me.

(For all the good it'll do you. I'm a magpie.)

(Don't forget to title the page...)

2008-11-18T16:34:00.000-08:00

Saw Quantum of Solace on Sunday. That was pretty decent. I'm not sure it was better than Casino Royale, but all in all I'd say the new Bond is a success.

Saw this trailer later that day. Okay then. More Witch Mountain. The Rock looks funny though.

Then I saw this (trailer 2). Looks terrible. Do I really need to see Kirk acting like an idiot little kid? Seriously? Nothing breaks the mood of a Star Trek movie like having guys driving around in cars near mountains. Apparently we didn't learn our lesson from the rock climbing scenes from Star Trek V. (Worst. Movie. Ever.)

I have to wash Trek V out of my brain, so I found this really cool game that I can't stop playing called Robokill. It's like Robotron, but with a plot and levels and stuff. (Yes, I know, technically Robotron had a plot. And technically it's called Robotron:2084. But really. Let's just move on.)

Mah-nah-mah-nah vs. Star Wars. Delightful.

Did you know there's a Snoopy World War I flying Ace game coming out? Me neither. Looks fun though...

Oh, and Finally, a big shout out to my good friend Cindy (EJ's wife) who got her book published! Awesome, awesome, and more awesome. I am totally jealous and extremely happy for her at the same time. Good work, Cindy. Don't stop. We need more good books. Now everyone go buy it.

I took October off.

2008-11-09T21:45:00.001-08:00

From updating my blog. To see if anyone noticed.

It is completely unclear to me whether or not anyone did.

I don't care.

I'm still typing. Look at the words, here, they were all typed by me. I can't stop typing. I'm a typing machine. What would you call a typing machine? A typewriter? That's ridiculous.

Today we're all about randomness because, well, why not? Forgive me if I ramble a little bit. This thing is going to cover all kinds of bases from sports to shoes to world of warcraft. Get ready. Here we go.

My favorite new mini-game in World of Warcraft is the "Can I type my password in fast enough that I don't have to watch the undead dragon land and make my screen shake" game. Seriously. I can't get enough of it.

Shoes. Imelda Marcos would have been proud. Wait, is she dead?

NBA standings as of today have 3 unbeaten teams: The Lakers (Yay!), The Jazz (good for Utah), and the Hawks (uh...what?). That would be the Atlanta Hawks. For those of you who don't follow basketball, let me give you an analogy. That would be like saying the three best companies that
make cake are Sara Lee, Duncan Hines, and Firestone. Yeah, try to figure that out.

Best part of the Muppets was always these two guys.

For the life of me, I can't believe I didn't see the last line of this video coming from a mile away, because...well, just because.

Oh my gosh, so much fun. ASSEMBLER! (Physics are neat).

I had a physical on Friday and my nurse told me I was "terribly healthy". My blood pressure is awesomely low and I had a great EKG. Afterwards the nurse was like "You don't smoke, do you?" And I was like "I do, actually." She gave me a look and she says, "Noooooo." Like she doesn't believe me. Isn't it great to be able to do that? I'm ridiculously healthy for an overweight smoker. That's good to know. The whole point was that I'm starting a clinical diet next wednesday. I thought I was going to have to start it on Friday, but the nutritionist is meeting with me next Wednesday. I asked the nurse if that meant I could continue eating like an idiot for five more days. Her response? "We don't recommend it."

Obama. That is all.

Ok, maybe that's not all. Actually heard from a friend of mine that some people at his job were taking the day off to recuperate because we'd elected a...well, that word...as president. They were calling it "Black Wednesday" (which is even funnier to me because the election was on a Tuesday. Just straight up smarts with these people.) Anyhoo, my friend called it Honkey Introspection day. Which made me laugh. So, I'm sharing it with you. I hope you laughed too.

Sometimes you just don't know what to say.

2008-09-30T20:21:00.000-07:00

A truly good friend of mine, a very intelligent person, honestly one of the smartest, funniest people I have ever known, passed away over the weekend. Jeff Freeman was a truly remarkable person and I will miss him tremendously.

His website was a constant source of hilarity and inspiration, and it makes me sad to think that he won't be updating it anymore.

You will be missed Jeff.

Running Commentary From My Head

2008-09-24T07:40:00.000-07:00

The building I work at is creating a lake.

This is how weird things have gotten, that we're actually building a lake behind this office. I'm imagining in my head two guys from building management having this conversation:

Guy1: I'd like our property to be on the lake.
Guy2: Lakefront property is expensive.
Guy1: Hm...I have an idea.

It's actually full of water out there and they put a fountain in it that sprays water up in the air. Won't find that in any naturally formed lakes, let me tell ya.

I just find that bizarre.

Today's rant is about Tea and Coffee. For the Love of all that is holy, I would like tea and coffee that tastes like, and I know this is bat-guano insane, tea and coffee. Is that too much to ask?

Every different type of coffee we have in our office has some flavor in it. It's hazelnut, or french vanilla, or "paris" flavored and I don't know what "paris" is supposed to taste like but I'm guessing it's "artsy". Possibly some kind of cheese based coffee flavor. We also have "Kenyan" which I'm assuming tastes like 26 miles of running. I don't know.

I want to buy Tea in a can so I can stop drinking soda, but apparently Tea in a can is impossible to make without adding 50% lemon flavor. I don't want lemon flavor. If I wanted lemon flavor I'd buy Country Time Lemonade. I want Tea flavor. This does not exist.

I wanted to buy individual tea packets that I could pour in a water bottle so I could drink tea all day long. This is also non-existant. Oh, they make packets that you can pour directly into bottles of water. They come in the following "tea" flavors: Blueberry, Green Tea, White Jasmine, Blackberry, Strawberry, Lemon (STOP IT), Orange, Mango, and no kidding, pomegranite. There is no tea flavored tea.

I went to a restaurant on Tuesday and ordred Tea and the waiter says, "Have you had our tea?" This is a bad sign. Something bad is coming. I say, "No..." He says, "It's mint with a hint of grape flavoring and GAAH!-" Because at that point I was strangling him with the napkin from the bread basket.

Ok, not really, but I was thinking it.

When I order tea you shouldn't be asking me things like, "What would you like it to taste like?"

Uh, I'd like it to taste like Tea. Thanks.

Ok, Rant over.

Here's some Games I've been playing on the web:

Fantastic Contraption. This must have taken a long time to make. It's a really neat game where you build things to try to get your little square into the giant box. Careful what you build, some things will work and others won't.

Elements. This is sort of a weird "breakout" style game, where you actually rotate the level and try to get the ball to fall down to the next level. The goal is to get to the bottom of all 25 levels. Neat.

Loops of Zen. I thought this was cool, it's just connecting up all the connections so that nothing is lonely. Sort of a metaphor for life, don't you think?

Light-Bot. This is brilliant. They should give this to kids to teach them about programming. I've probably spent more time with this game than all the others combined. It's all about programming a robot to light up areas in your factory.

Gravity Hook. This is fun in a "Spider Man Web Slinging" climb to the top kind of way.

Maze Stopper. Neat idea for a game. Win the race by putting blocks in front of your opponents.

Neat things I saw on the web:

NinToaster. A guy with way too much free time on his hands.

Custom Receipt Maker. You ever buy something and you don't get a receipt so you have to write it down, but then you have this scrap of paper in with your receipts that doesn't look like a receipt? This webpage is here to solve that problem for you. It's a tiny little niche problem, but they've solved it.

Kentucky Math. This is why you should make sure your accountant isn't from Kentucky. Very funny. Plus, I love that math and numbers even allow stuff like this to happen.

Robocop Vs. Terminator. Very slick fan made film of the Terminator fighting...well, it's right there in the title. Oh, and a special guest apperance at the end from one of my favorite things.

Still alive...snakes haven't gotten me...yet...

2008-09-09T11:07:00.000-07:00

So, Allie apparently saw another snake in the front yard (smaller, less aggressive, not actually looking through a window) but he's vanished now, and we haven't seen anymore since then. Though we don't walk into the backyard without a military commando style check out the window and a brief flashing of the porch light if it's dark.

So, all in all we look to be safe from the invading hordes of legless reptiles. For now. I'm sure they're simply planning their next attack more rigorously (what if we sent two snakes at the same time!).

Anyway, there's blogging to be done, and I'm not going to let anything that doesn't have the ability to wear shoes deter me from blogging. Blog, blog, blog.

It's a stupid word.

Anyway.

Zombies go to the prom looks like it will require a rental.

If Snakes aren't really your thing you could always just play with this spider.

And speaking of shoes...would you actually wear these? That's pretty cool, though, right?

I'm not sure exactly how to play Gride, but the point seems to be to get your car over the hills. It does have some pretty funky music though.

Snakes. Why did it have to be snakes?

2008-08-23T12:07:00.000-07:00

It wasn't actually snakes so much as it was A snake.

6:45 Allie wakes me up to tell me "There's a giant snake on our backporch."

6:45 is not a good time to be woken up. And in the list of reasons why you wouldn't want to be woken up, "There's a giant snake on our backporch." Is right near the top of the list along with "The police want to ask you some questions." And "I think something's on fire."

So I get up and go look, and I see this guy:

Yeah, that's a 4 and a 1/2 foot Rat snake, sitting on Allie's chair, looking in our window. That's just creepy.

Well, first, before I got too involved and he was just sitting on the porch, Allie went and hit him in the head with a hoe. I'm all like, "What are you, Conan?" But now the snake's not just hanging out on our porch, he's mad. That was when he moved to the chair to wait for us.

He's looking in the window like, "Come back out here and do that again, wench!"

So, now I have to call people.

At this point Allie's like, "I gotta go to work. Deal with him."

Fan-tastic.

The first place I call is the exterminator that usually comes to do our bugs. He tells me, "You should call animal control."

Good idea. I call animal control and have this conversation:

Me: Yeah, there's a giant snake on my back porch.
Animal Control Lady: Can you get out your front door?
Me: Uh...yeah?
Animal Control Lady: We don't send someone unless you're trapped.
Me: Uh...ok then.

Animal Control is not helpful unless you can't possibly get out of your house without being attacked. Good to know. I'll file that away for future reference.

So, I look up Snake Removal on Google (Google is your friend!) and the first guy I call tells me, "It costs 229$ just for me to come out there and if he wanders away before I get there I still have to charge you."

Yeah, no thanks dude.

So I call someone else and this guy's like, "It sounds like a rat snake. You don't want to get rid of him. It eats Rats."

I tell him, "It's going to eat me if someone doesn't come get it. Besides I have 3 cats."

He says, "Well, fine, I'll come get him, but it's 75$."

75$ is way better than 229$ so I agree and he shows up. He has a metal hook and a plastic tub. He says, "They're really not poisonous, but they can be a little aggressive."

Yeah, he's taken up watch on my porch and he's waiting for me to open the door so he can attack Allie. We're a bit past aggressive at this stage.

The guy goes out and snags it's head with the hook, and then puts his hand on the middle of the snake and picks him up. He says, "See? He's docile." The snake waits until that sentence is finished and then he starts striking at the metal hook holding him up. The guy goes, "Oh, well, there's the attitude."

Mr. Snake got a spot in the tub and a 75$ trip to the woods behind the snake wranglers house (Bet his wife loves him).

Anyway. That's the excitement for this week. Next week I hope to find a nest of scorpions somewhere so we can do all this again.

Here's a couple more pictures of Mr. Snake.

Where oh where have i been?

2008-08-14T21:19:00.000-07:00

I so need this. Take note people who might buy me gifts in the future.

So, this plus this equals this, right? That would be a great 3 movie box collection.

Also, build your own arcade. That's nice. I made a Dragon's Lair.

Not much else today. Just making sure everyone's still alive.

Short post today.

2008-08-04T08:02:00.000-07:00

So, thinking about Batman, and how he keeps tearing things up while he's driving that tumbler around, the question occurred to me: Is Gotham the only place on earth where you can make a legitimate auto insurance claim for "My car got Batmobiled"?

While I'm still on a Batman kick, here's an interview with Heath Ledger about it.

Awesome 3-D painting for a parking garage: Check it out.

Star Wars Dance Off. Nuff said.